-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Monday 2006-10-16 at 00:40 -0800, John Andersen wrote:
The inventions upon which any current invention is based were also given this protection, even though they in turn depended on prior inventions. And so on, all the way from the automobile back to the invention of the wheel.
The only thing that has changed is that the whole process has become more civilized over the last 300 years.
One may argue it has gone too far, and I would agree, but that is but a temporal imbalance in the laws, which the market will undo one way or another over time.
[OT?] The law can be abused, and it is. If I'm not mistaken, the period protected by patent has been increased (in the US?), so that it takes too long for inventions to become public property. This is specially so for software. Things like clicking can be patented. And finally the patent law is so complex that you need a host of lawyers to get and enforce a patent. I guess that's about your meaning with «it has gone too far» :-? - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFFM1IxtTMYHG2NR9URAlm7AJ9/7fSB61GT3HjR7873rHIg5JuSKgCdEq3e JUSIyjMaVugwP7fiaKEhwyY= =MVdo -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----