Re: Intellectual property & copyright

[Norman Bauman nbauman@xxxxxxxx]

I've interviewed Richard Stallman.

Stallman is opposed to most computer copyrights and patents, because he
believes that (1) they were not actually invented by the person who is
named on the copyright, but rather being freely shared by programmers until
somebody tried to claim it for himself (2) many technology patents were
granted for ideas that were obvious to everyone skilled in the art and
should never have been granted (3) copyrights make it difficult or
impossible for programmers to continue to use those procedures that their
community created in the first place.

Stallman believes that computer programmers could make money without
patents by consulting, and that this would be a better system because the
intellectual property system makes programming so inefficient.

I've read a lot of patents, and written a lot of patent stories, and it's
clear that he's right in many cases. Some companies have been granted
patents for fundamental ideas, like using monoclonal antibodies in sandwich
assays, that were obvious to everyone in the field, and were clearly upheld
by a patent office examiner, judge and maybe jury that didn't understand
the technology.

One of the patents that affected everyone on this list was the PRD+ patent
on expanding abbreviations. PRD+ sued XyQuest, and XyQuest was forced to
remove the feature from XyWrite 3.55. This was not because XyQuest believed
that PRD+ had a valid patent, or that they thought the courts would uphold
PRD+'s patent, but because they thought it would cost more money and time
to fight the patent than they could afford to spend while they were
developing the Windows version of XyWrite. The PRD+ patent was subsequently
invalidated, as somebody on this list noted.

Science magazine had an article a year or 2 ago about how inexperienced
examiners at the patent office were allowing patents for inventions that
were actually well known and in common use before the inventors claimed them.

I just finished covering the omeprazole patent trial, in which the judge
decided that many of the patents owned by Astra and AstraZeneca for
omeprazole were invalid, because of obviousness or other reasons. All the
big drug companies are taking broad, invalid patients to discoursage
competitors from manufacturing their drugs after the original patents expire.

Norman

At 09:43 AM 8/23/02 -0400, Leslie Bialler wrote:

>> It's Richard Stahlman who is at odds with the current
>> notion of copyright.
>
>Does Mr. Stahlman, then, object to the idea of making money? Perhaps,
>though, he supports himself by giving lectures, for a fee, on the problems
>of the current notion of copyright. That's what makes America great
>though--people can make a living denouncing the evils of global capitalism
>and earn enough to retire comfortably.


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Norman Bauman
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