That's being shortsighted at best. First I do hope that your little trip to the university isn't only motivated by the financial aspect.
It's motivated by my dream of working for a chemical company. No research at chemical company => no future for me. Sure I could do academic research, but frankly, most of that isn't realy exiting and all the exiting stuff is being done in collaboration with chemical companies. I highly doubt they'd continue doing that if there was no chance of making a decent profit out of the research.
Then you assume that somehow enforcing an ownership on your idea is the only way to attract investor? Excuse me but that is stupid, if only because intellectual property is a notion fist formulated in the sixties and only recently widespread.
The basic patent law has been around since the 17th century, at least in England and coppyright sprung up around the same time. Trade secrets have been protected since much earlier, as the glassblowers from Murano can attest. Intelectual property itself, as a term may be new, but it encompasses some realy old things.
Einstein, Niels Bohr, Feynman, have all worked, and gotten rich without any intellectual property of their idea. An interesting thinking experiment would be figuring out what would have happened if that notion was enforced at the time. Probably nohing good as Mileva Marik couldn't have communicated Lenhart's work in progress to Einstein. So no article on photoelectric effect for the world. It's only a start of course.
Argh! Doesn't this ever stop?!
I'm trying to argue about protecting inventions and every other sentence people drag fundamental research into the picture. for God's sake why do you guys keep doing that?
Anyway, to counter your question, would Bakeland have pursued the development of Bakelite if his competitors could just have piggy-backed on his invention?
When I talk about intellectual property, I talk about the precise concept. I'll admit wikipedia as a valid source for the definition.
I can see where this is going and I don't like it. The precise concept can either be a definition so broad that it prevents me from saying the word "space shuttle" without explicit permission from NASA, or it can be so narrow that I'd need to know every line in the US, EU and brazilian patent law by heart. Wikipedia defines it very broad, but there are so many points you can find something to nitpick that a smokescreen is transparent compared to the reasoning we're going to end up with here and at the end one can easely claim that because DNA sequences and game concepts can be patented in the US, patent law should be abandoned forever.
But first, let me ask you a few questions: Do you realy believe that it is in everyone's best interest to make it so that companies can freely use the resarch, branding and product development done by others without compensating the one that invested in it?
Do you realy believe it is right that I can just start producing Coca Cola and piggyback on the companies fame without ever giving them credit for anything?
Do you expect people to put up with the idea that everything they have worked for their whole life will essentialy be for naught because some start-up company is going to take the tech and use the billiosn they saved by not developing anything to instead build more production capacity?
Or to be more general: Do you realy believe that developing a product doesn't cost anything at all?
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Topic: Digital Piracy (Read 12761 times)