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.