On Mon, May 30, 2005 20:23:13 PM -0400, Daniel Carrera ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > Chris BONDE wrote:
> >Now the basic concept of rewarding a person for disclosing their > >idea to the world instead of keeping it a secret is good (patent). > > That is neither the intention, nor the effect of patents. As far as I know, it indeed *is*. I (government): 1) make sure that everybody can learn all the details of new technologies by *forcing* inventors to disclose what they did. 2) keep inventors motivated to keep inventing while giving away by granting them a temporary monopoly. > The intention of patents was to encourage people to work on > developing ideas with the promise that, in return, they would be > granted a temporary monopoly. No. Without patents people would have invented and sold anyway, just keeping the secret on how they did stuff. Meaning that their monopoly, without the patent papers which are mandated just to share knowledge as *early* as possible, could have lasted even longer than a patent duration. Marco -- Marco Fioretti mfioretti, at the server mclink.it Fedora Core 3 for low memory http://www.rule-project.org/ I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. - Groucho Marx --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
