Patents on children?

[<ehj@cleosan.com>]

Legal rules on relations should map on the real world. In Sweden, a child
is automatically assigned a father if he is married to the mother,
regardless of the biological origin or the child. If parents are not
married, fatherhood is assigned through a formalised procedure under
certain conditions.

I'd say it's like getting a patent on your child. Of course the
assignement of rights and obligations must serve a justifiable purpose.

Another example. Stronger "property rights" in a marriage may have
undesireable effects. Let's say anyone who can prove a married person has
comitted adultery may sue that person. What would happen?

Legal rules on production of achievements should also map on the real
world. If all achievements were produced under the same conditions, the
rules should mirror that. You could e.g. apply the patent priciple of
registration, examination and publication on everything.

If the conditions under which the production of achievements takes place
are not uniform, legal rules should be be divided into categories needed.

Swedish law identifies different categories and constructs different
abstractions to which different rights and obligations are assigned. One
is "verk" (work) another is "uppfinning" (invention).

What does it take more than putting a pen to a paper to write a book?
What does it take more than a computer to write a program?
etc

Are the production requisites different enough to justify different rules?

The "what is an invention"- and "software is hardware"-discussion is often
detached from the problem the lawmakers wanted to solve: finding
appropriate rules to stimulate the production of achievements.

//Erik