http://www.contextmag.com/setFrameRedirect.asp?src=/archives/200204/BookExcerpt.asp
I must agree with Lessig. Patents are important, yes, but they have gone too far to the point that patents are no longer about reasonable protection, but to ensure monopolies, much like how Lessig writes about AT&T in the above article. Unfortunately, this is something that is neither in the public consciousness nor is it something that Congress is concerned with. On the contrary, Congress always talks about "toughening" standards, but when you only have contact with business lobbyists, who only have their own interests at heart, what can you do?
I believe that it would be in our best interests to relax patent legislation down to traditional standards. The way it is now, it is nothing short of maddening.
Melon
Lessig says that legal protection is becoming much too broad, especially for intellectual property, because existing companies are interested in stifling any innovation that might threaten them. Lessig, a professor of law at Stanford University (www.stanford.edu), notes that the Founding Fathers tried to encourage innovation by initially limiting copyrights to maps, charts, and books and, even with those, restricting the initial term of a copyright to 14 years. Now, he says, copyrights automatically attach to almost anything that anyone writes and last practically forever.
He says protection is so broad that anyone making a movie has to hire teams of lawyers to check whether a copyright will be violated if, say, a poster shows up in the background. He writes: ?The film Twelve Monkeys was stopped by a court 28 days after its release because an artist claimed a chair in the movie resembled a sketch of a piece of furniture he had designed. The movie Batman Forever was threatened because the Batmobile drove through an allegedly copyrighted courtyard, and the original architect demanded money before the film could be released.?
I must agree with Lessig. Patents are important, yes, but they have gone too far to the point that patents are no longer about reasonable protection, but to ensure monopolies, much like how Lessig writes about AT&T in the above article. Unfortunately, this is something that is neither in the public consciousness nor is it something that Congress is concerned with. On the contrary, Congress always talks about "toughening" standards, but when you only have contact with business lobbyists, who only have their own interests at heart, what can you do?
I believe that it would be in our best interests to relax patent legislation down to traditional standards. The way it is now, it is nothing short of maddening.
Melon