The Guardian On Intellectual Property

mykdavies writes "The Guardian has an excellent article giving lay readers an overview of some of the problems being caused by the concept of 'intellectual property', including references to stories familiar to Slashdot readers, such as DVD Jon, the Sony rootkit, Amazon and Google business patents." From the article: "Even facts about the world can, in some cases, become the property of commercial companies. It was the promise of gaining patents on the human genome that lured investors into the private consortium that attempted to sequence it in competition with the public effort. Laboratory animals have already been patented, starting with the OncoMouse, an animal whose genome has been manipulated to ensure that it develops cancer."

Comments

IP Can't be protected

[dwandy]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again ... if western society thinks it can stop other countries from using existing ideas to build new ideas, we're crazy.
China, as an example, has shown a complete lack of respect for the copyrights on software, and I see nothing to convince me that they are going to pay any attention to north american IP laws when push-comes-to-shove...
At some point the 'powers' are going to have to realise that ideas are not the same as physical property, and can not be treated the same.
All new knowedge is built on the work of those that came before. The rate of increase of new ideas is directly related to how quickly the new idea can be passed on to. So why is it that now when the dissemination of information is essentially instantaneous and free we are working hard at creating artificial barriers to impede progress?

Re:Omissions

[Bralkein]

Yeah, I thought the same thing when I read it this morning. However, I did actually read it in the newspaper, and it's the Saturday one at that, which I think a lot of people get when they might not get it normally (because it has lots of extra stuff), so hopefully enough people will read it that a few of them will really take exception and Google about it, in which case they will doubtless stumble upon the people fighting this stuff. It may not be perfect, but it's good that the issue is working its way out there. This intellectual property bullshit has gone on long enough; just ask any man on the street if they think you should be able to patent a mouse, website or film plot and they will tell you it's madness.

I think the article makes a very good point when it talks about how the companies who are so vigourously in favour of IP would shy away immediately if it worked both ways. A typical example I often see posted here on /. is: If by purchasing a CD I am only buying the right to listen to that music, then why can't I snap my CD in half, take it back to the shop and ask for a new one for £0.50 or however much the materials and manufacturing actually costs?

Riddled with errors and unsupported statements.

[torokun]

I'm not a lawyer yet, just a law student. This is not legal advice...

I must say, this is one of the worst articles on IP I've ever seen. Whoever thinks it's 'excellent' is just hankering for some anti-establishment echo-room action rather than reality. I don't think I have time to cover them all, but here are just a few.

until recently it was entirely clear to the law. Things could have owners and ideas could not.

This is baloney. It's been quite a while since the constitution was written, and right there in Article 1 section 8 clause 8 is the statement by the framers that is the basis for our patent system. Ideas could be owned in 1789, and long before that as well, as England also had a patent system.

Not to mention the fact that money is an idea, equitable servitudes are ideas, usufructs are ideas, loans are ideas, contracts are ideas, and, now this will really blow your mind --

options on options...

well, you get the idea.

Even facts about the world can, in some cases, become the property of commercial companies. It was the promise of gaining patents on the human genome...

Facts about the world, laws of nature, or abstract mathematical statements or equations, cannot be patented.

Gene sequences may seem to be getting close to that line, but you can only patent a gene sequence that you can extract and replicate; it's analogous to extracting and purifying a chemical compound from a naturally occurring mixture of substances, in effect making available a new substance that no one could put to practical use before.

Laboratory animals have already been patented, starting with the OncoMouse, an animal whose genome has been manipulated to ensure that it develops cancer.

An animal that's human-engineered is certainly not a 'fact of nature' -- it never existed before someone made it. It's a result of engineering just as much as an electric circuit or a toaster. It's just alive.

It is certainly true that the governments, the peoples and the industries of poor countries have fewer drugs than they might otherwise have because of international patent law.

This is one of those completely unsubstantiated statements. I tend to think that many of the drugs that the developing world uses were developed at least partially due to the patent system. At any rate, what's really clear is that they ALL come from the U.S. and Europe.

In this world, size is no protection. It just makes you a more succulent target for enemy lawyers.

I would just like to point out that both sides have lawyers -- this makes it sound like lawyers are the enemy. In fact, lawyers are just the guys that help their clients get what they deserve under the law.

People with more money have always been able to hire better lawyers in our legal system, and that problem has nothing to do with intellectual property.

Big pharmaceuticals must patent everything, if only to be certain the competition does not do it first.

The system is supposed to work this way. It incentivizes companies to research and patent things as fast as they can, pushing the limits of technology, and then disclosing them to the public. Otherwise, they might do less research, and might keep their research secret, thereby keeping it from the rest of us much longer than the 20 year life of patents... Sometimes reverse engineering is possible, but sometimes it's not.

when I make a copy of your program, you still have the original, which works just as well as it ever did. Equally, when you make a copy and sell it to me, it has cost you nothing, so why should you charge me for it as if it were a limited resource?

How about so I can pay my programmers? How about so I can invest i

Re:Patenting animals?

[petermgreen]

no it doesn't but if those mice escape and start breeding and someone collects breeds and sells them should that person be liable for patent infringement?

applying patents to something that can self replicate and interbreed with a natural variation of itsself leads to a nightmare scenario in which you can be sued because a customer of the patent holder contaminated your stock!