Owning ideas
Friday, January 20, 2006, 09:17 PM - Sound
The boom in the intellectual property market will not reap rewards for us all: Andrew Brown for The Guardian, November 19, 2005:
The difference between ideas and things is obvious as soon as someone hits you over the head with an idea - so obvious that until recently it was entirely clear to the law. Things could have owners and ideas could not. Yet this simple distinction is being changed all around us. Ideas are increasingly treated as property - as things that have owners who may decide who gets to use them and on what terms.
Ideas such as one-click shopping, getting customer reviews on a website or even putting classified ads on the internet are now patented, which is to say that somebody owns them - Amazon.com the first two, Google, the classified ad patent - and anybody else who wants to make use of them must pay a rent to the owner. Last week, Amazon was also granted a patent that covers getting shoppers to review the things they have bought on its website. BT has tried to patent the hyperlink, Microsoft is trying to patent XML, a way of writing computer files that is fundamental to the operation of modern business.
Keep reading Owning Ideas, one of the most brilliant articles I have read on the topic. If interested, read also Patent Absurdity, another beautiful by a very inspired Richard Stallman.
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