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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: patent office closure
Message-ID: <5652@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 1-Jun-85 23:18:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.5652
Posted: Sat Jun  1 23:18:39 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Jun-85 23:18:39 EDT
References: <1926@watcgl.UUCP>, <656@lsuc.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 30

> ...  Say the first word processor
> package was allowed a patent.  The implication would be that even if you
> wrote *your own* package you'd be violating an existing patent!  It
> wouldn't even matter if it was substantially different in approach, if
> the patent was granted for a fairly general description of what a word
> processor does.  Is that what you want to see?

My understanding is that this is *exactly* the idea behind patent law,
and it's a damn good one:  to give the first person to think of a new
idea a chance to make some money off it, *without* 10000 ripoff artists
jumping in and stealing his market.  [flame on]  I realize that this is
a dirty capitalist notion, and that such people really ought to throw
their ideas into the public domain out of the goodness of their heart,
for the good of all mankind -- but somehow you don't get nearly as many
useful inventions when the inventor is denied the opportunity to profit
from his ingenuity.  Of course, when we are all living in a happy state
of socialist bliss, this is utterly inconsequential, since we all know
that our beloved welfare state is the best of all possible worlds and
could not possibly be improved (except by the government, of course,
from which all blessings flow).  [flame off]  What we need is a better
patent system, not the abolition of the current one.

Incidentally, I doubt that the first word processor was patentable, since
it involved no leap of invention, just incremental improvements based on
things "obvious to one skilled in the art".  So you are raising a false
bogeyman to frighten us.  Try a better case:  did anyone grudge Buckminster
Fuller his modest royalties on the Geodesic Dome?
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry