If the patent system required that the idea be developed into something useful by the patent owner in a specified period of time, that would probably be fine. The problem is the people that patent something that they have no intention of developing, and use the patent only to sue others who have thought of the same thing *independently*.
Wasn't there some system back in pioneer days where you could establish a claim to land only if you actually developed it (cleared it, or whatever) within a certain number of years?
I don't think so. From Maher Arar's statement to the press:
"Then some police came and searched my bags and copied my Canadian passport. I was getting worried, and I asked what was going on, and they would not answer. I asked to make a phone call, and they would not let me.
Then a team of people came and told me they wanted to ask me some questions. One man was from the FBI, and another was from the New York Police Department. I was scared and did not know what was going on. I told them I wanted a lawyer. They told me I had no right to a lawyer, because I was not an American citizen."
If you're not an American citizen, you have no right to a phone call or a lawyer if you are arrested in the US.
I think one could do this effectively without obfuscating the code at all. I've heard about code that, when a certain key sequence is entered, displays a copyright message (the text of which might be a little bit obfuscated in the source). In the case I heard of, it was completely effective at proving that the software was stolen.
The point is that people who are going to steal software are not likely to spend very much effort at all to figure out how it works. On the other hand, someone who *does* figure out how it works and modifies it, probably could have written it themselves anyway and wouldn't need to steal it.
The reason spam is so annoying is that we get so much of it, for things we aren't interested in. If we only got email about things we were actually interested in, not only would the senders get a much better response rate, we probably wouldn't even consider it to be spam.
Slashdot Mirror
If the patent system required that the idea be developed into something useful by the patent owner in a specified period of time, that would probably be fine. The problem is the people that patent something that they have no intention of developing, and use the patent only to sue others who have thought of the same thing *independently*.
Wasn't there some system back in pioneer days where you could establish a claim to land only if you actually developed it (cleared it, or whatever) within a certain number of years?
I don't think so. From Maher Arar's statement to the press:
"Then some police came and searched my bags and copied my Canadian passport. I was getting worried, and I asked what was going on, and they would not answer. I asked to make a phone call, and they would not let me.
Then a team of people came and told me they wanted to ask me some questions. One man was from the FBI, and another was from the New York Police Department. I was scared and did not know what was going on. I told them I wanted a lawyer. They told me I had no right to a lawyer, because I was not an American citizen."
If you're not an American citizen, you have no right to a phone call or a lawyer if you are arrested in the US.
I think one could do this effectively without obfuscating the code at all. I've heard about code that, when a certain key sequence is entered, displays a copyright message (the text of which might be a little bit obfuscated in the source). In the case I heard of, it was completely effective at proving that the software was stolen.
The point is that people who are going to steal software are not likely to spend very much effort at all to figure out how it works. On the other hand, someone who *does* figure out how it works and modifies it, probably could have written it themselves anyway and wouldn't need to steal it.
The reason spam is so annoying is that we get so much of it, for things we aren't interested in. If we only got email about things we were actually interested in, not only would the senders get a much better response rate, we probably wouldn't even consider it to be spam.