Probably not. That, at least, is the opinion of Mike Masnick of TechDirt. Check out the latest entry in his series on “IP” and it’s foundations (and lack there-of) in US law. If you’re not familiar the difference between copyright, patents and trademarks, this series will give you some idea of how they all [are supposed] to work. Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, this is good read on a dry topic. And for what it’s worth the law quoted here pretty much matches up with what was explained to me by an attorney during my own singular foray into the patent process (never again).

I’m not a big fan of software or business process patents myself and I think the protections afforded by copyright have been unbalanced in favor of corporate greed over public good and fair use*. I tend towards the idea that ideas are free and should be disseminated freely as often as possible. And I find it ridiculous that copyright now extends to multiple decades after the originally creator has gone the way of the dodo.

* Disclaimer: This opinion does not necessarily reflect the policies of Bit Group nor does it presume to state the beliefs of everyone here.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under Intellectual Property. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.