On Monday 19 November 2007 20:13:27 Dave Crossland wrote: > Yes, its important to avoid the confusing term "intellectual property" > and consider the laws that are grouped in that term on their own, > since their purposes and details are totally different.
It doesn't help though that the patent office has been renamed the Intellectual Property Office, since as you say it's inaccurate. I tend to prefer to say "intellectual monopolies" since I think it's a more accurate way of describing the same set of things. (A monopoly on a trademark, a monopoly on copying something, a monopoly on creating embodiments of an invention, etc.) It also makes it more obvious the issues around patents on business methods - since that's clearly a monopoly on a way of doing business - something normally considered against the public interest. If you start talking about "intellectual monopoly law" though to a lawyer, they'll just look at you blankly until you start speaking their language. In exactly the same way that killing a piece of software doesn't actually involve anything like killing :-) (let alone the worry and concern software can raise if errors like "The software you are using has performed an illegal action" actually make it back to the user...) Michael. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
