Ray Saintonge wrote:
Wesley Sheldahl wrote:
On Thursday, April 1, 2004, at 05:34 PM, Timwi wrote:
Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen wrote:
On Thu, 1 Apr 2004, Timwi wrote:
We were looking for something we came up with that we could patent, right?
Are we? I think it's an awful idea to have the Wikimedia Foundation patent something.
Notice that patenting something doesn't mean asking for royalties.
True. However, the historical stated purpose of patents is to allow an inventor to profit from his or her invention for a period of time before everyone else starts profiting from the invention, and thereby provide incentive for further innovation. What other benefit would there be to patenting something? There needs to be some benefit to justify the expense involved.
For some the bragging rights are the only benefit that they need. :-)
And then, there are even people out there who would consider patenting something, just to deprive the rest of the world the use of it. Remember, a patent is the right to prevent use by others; the patentholder is not obligated to make the patented thing available to the public.
--Michael Snow
On Apr 2, 2004, at 10:43 PM, Michael Snow wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Wesley Sheldahl wrote:
True. However, the historical stated purpose of patents is to allow an inventor to profit from his or her invention for a period of time before everyone else starts profiting from the invention, and thereby provide incentive for further innovation. What other benefit would there be to patenting something? There needs to be some benefit to justify the expense involved.
For some the bragging rights are the only benefit that they need. :-)
And then, there are even people out there who would consider patenting something, just to deprive the rest of the world the use of it. Remember, a patent is the right to prevent use by others; the patentholder is not obligated to make the patented thing available to the public.
The same can be said about copyright, and yet we retain copyright on all (or most) of our contributions. Why is that?
Peter
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