Sorry, bro. Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution says:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
So, a) those guys back then did contemplate time-limited monopolies and b) they made no mention of limiting the the monopolies to physical manifestations of ideas. It just says discoveries.
It seems to me, the real beef is not a constitutional one, but rather a legislative one. We need Congress to start funding the Patent Office better so that good people will come and stay, and they will have the time they need to do research sufficient to find, or not find, prior art.
I just completed a six-month trip around the world with a ThinkPad T series. It was my beater laptop and it withstood 40K miles in a backpack. I dropped it, spilled water on the screen (got it out with a hair dryer in Saigon) and that sucker kept on tickin'. I did not get to Everest base camp, but it survived all of Oceania, the jungles of Cambodia and 'Nam, China and India. It was pre-DVD burner, so I uploaded all good photos to flickr as I went. There are internet cafes seemingly on every block in the 3rd world.
It has since been retired for a newer T-series, but it still works. The power converter even held up well on just about any voltage/wattage combo, AC or DC. Just remember your plug adapters. If you can get a beater cheap on eBay, go for it.
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Sorry, bro. Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution says: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" So, a) those guys back then did contemplate time-limited monopolies and b) they made no mention of limiting the the monopolies to physical manifestations of ideas. It just says discoveries. It seems to me, the real beef is not a constitutional one, but rather a legislative one. We need Congress to start funding the Patent Office better so that good people will come and stay, and they will have the time they need to do research sufficient to find, or not find, prior art.
I just completed a six-month trip around the world with a ThinkPad T series. It was my beater laptop and it withstood 40K miles in a backpack. I dropped it, spilled water on the screen (got it out with a hair dryer in Saigon) and that sucker kept on tickin'. I did not get to Everest base camp, but it survived all of Oceania, the jungles of Cambodia and 'Nam, China and India. It was pre-DVD burner, so I uploaded all good photos to flickr as I went. There are internet cafes seemingly on every block in the 3rd world.
It has since been retired for a newer T-series, but it still works. The power converter even held up well on just about any voltage/wattage combo, AC or DC. Just remember your plug adapters. If you can get a beater cheap on eBay, go for it.