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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, September 02 2012 @ 01:39 PM EDT |
Thanks for the reasoned and informative reply. There is obviously no question
that there are some complex and very interesting issues at play here.
I think the central issue hinges around this statement: "There is only one
choice, at least in the opinion of "advocates of FOSS." Ideas can not
be
protected because this is a matter of thought. The law, then, is supposed to
make property out of one's thoughts? No."
Let me give you an example from the field I work in -- medical research.
Again, I am not a lawyer so my understanding of medical patent law is certain
incomplete. Let's say I spend the better part of my career studying colon
cancer and discover that a particular variant (allele) of a gene is associated
with colon cancer. I can then invent a medical test that determines which
allele a patient has at that gene, thereby allowing us to assess their risk of
developing colon cancer. Patients at high risk would have frequent screening,
optimizing patient care and use of health care dollars.
Coming up with a similar test to determine the patient's allele is relatively
trivial. Therefore, unless the IDEA of using the alleles of this particular gene
to
discriminate colon cancer risk is protected, there is no way to recoup
investment costs. With no way to get return on investment, no reasonable
company is going to put R&D effort into looking for associations between
genes and diseases. This, in the long run, would clearly be bad for everyone.
I think a similar situation exists in software. The companies that put a large
amount of R&D into developing software and come up with novel ideas that
are non-obvious should (in my view) have some intellectual property
protection for those ideas so they can recoup their investments. There is no
doubt that the current climate has become a bit ridiculous and patents are
being awarded for obvious ideas (one-click ordering, for example) or that
companies are using these patents in an anticompetitive way (e.g. the
touchscreen heuristics patent that Apple has asserted without which a
touchscreen phone is essentially useless). But I think the notion that ideas
that are derived from substantial R&D shouldn't be protected is only going
to
lead to one outcome...iterative cloning of existing products where
manufacturers race to the lowest profit margins (ala Dell). This may seem like
it benefits consumers but I believe in the long run it does not.
Perhaps it just comes down to the fact that I am leaning towards the side that
ideas that are non-obvious and are the product of significant R&D effort
should be worthy of protection and FOSS advocates do not feel the same way. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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