Charles wrote (see below):
None of the problems would arise if the Patent Office were
abolished.
So, that is the answer.
And before anyone starts worrying about people not inventing
things without patent protection, remember Wordstar.
Wordstar had no protection of any kind. All of us used it
from the moment we got our young hands on a computer. But,
as we got older and went to work, what did we know? Why
clunky old Wordstar. The offices bought the program because
'everyone' knew it.
Other programmers piggy-backed their programs on the old
favorite and a Wordstar dynasty was born and we were all
pressing ^KB, ^KY, and similar horrible key combinations
which, however, we all knew - and often became the standard
key-presses for other programs.
If my memory serves me right, some 3 million copies were
sold before better word processing began to arrive.
Well, that didn't matter. Wordstar brought out its 'Wordstar
2000' and proceeded to make an horrendous mistake.
It protected the new program.
Programmers, who had helped to make Wordstar a dynasty had
trouble with the encryption process and turned away from it.
As did the customers in their millions.
After 6 months, the company removed the protection, but it
was too late.
Now, if you see Wordstar it is bundled with a new machine as
one of the GREAT programs offered.
The lesson should be learned. When Wordstar was free for
anyone to use, it prospered. Once it was protected, it went
down the drain.
Let me say that we should get rid of patents and copyright
protection. We don't need them.
Only downside is that Charles would be out of a job.
A merry Christmas to everyone and a Great New Year!
Harry
----------------------------------------
> C.A. Behney is skeptical that--even assuming Microsoft owns the
> courthouse (and wins all the way up through the Supreme Court)--this
> 'guarantees an easy victory' for Bill in the end. His reasons:
>
> (1) We're in a global environment 'where court decisions in one
> jurisdiction influence but do not bind other jurisdictions.'
>
> (2) Microsoft 'cannot dictate innovation,' which will undermine its
> monopoly.
>
> (3) 'Once on the docket, public scrutiny can drive the Court's
> decisions.' Even Justice Scalia may not like the idea of having everything
> on his computer controlled by 1 company.
>
> (4) 'Microsoft could win the court wars, and still be blindsided by
> the anger of an aware and aroused public.'
>
> Logical though these arguments certainly are, I know of no evidence
> in the antitrust record of the last couple of decades that would support
> them here. As to (1), is antimonopoly policy in the EU, Japan, Australia,
> and the rest of the 60 plus countries with antitrust laws on their books
> more STRINGENT than that of the U.S.? Hardly. It is almost invariably even
> weaker everywhere else than it is here. As for (2), it's true that
> technological innovation--as Schumpeter pointed out a half century ago--does
> indeed EVENTUALLY erode all monopolies. A life span of 50 years or more,
> however, has been typical for most U.S. monopolies (e.g., oil, steel,
> aluminum, tobacco). We can live with Bill's monopoly of the computer
> industry 'til 2050? While technology is moving considerably faster here
> than in, say, oil and steel, Bill is--as I understand the situation--either
> stamping it out or buying it up at an even swifter pace. (His fortune is
> not exactly stagnating: The reported $20 billion increase in his net worth
> in 1997, for example, works out to--according to my cheap calculator--an
> average profit of $55 million per DAY.) If it's not his, it won't be
> tolerated now or in 2025.
>
> As to (3), the possibility that 'public scrutiny'--once the
> Microsoft case reaches the Supreme Court's docket--might somehow deter its 8
> pro-monopoly justices from exonerating Bill's monopoly, strikes me as
> remote. To be sure, this could occur if the national MEDIA was aroused and
> united against the monopolist. But the media is not and cannot be, simply
> because it, too, has recently been monopolized. With the killing of U.S.
> antitrust in the mid-'70s, ambitious media moguls bought up (or bankrupted)
> their competitors, with the result that we now have major American cities in
> which there is a single daily newspaper, a single owner of its radio and/or
> TV stations, and even the situation where a sole 'conglomerate' controls all
> three. No one doubts that the Supreme Court reads the election returns.
> But our 1997 media monopolists have every incentive to defend rather than
> condemn Bill Gates' monopoly--and thus to shape public opinion in his
> favor, not in the public's.
>
> Public anger in the WAKE of a Supreme Court decision, (4),
> exonerating the Microsoft monopoly? How is it to arise, given the fact,
> again, that the country's media is compelled by its own self-interest to
> take a pro-monopoly position--to portray that Court retreat into 19th
> century policy notions (bigger the better) as a victory for 'efficiency' and
> 'technology' and thus as 'pro-consumer?' As a nation, we no longer have a
> working mechanism for either the creation or the expression of an informed
> public opinion against monopoly. Our media is now a shield for national
> monopolies rather than the scourge it once was.
>
> Put your money on Bill's legal team. Our antitrust division at the
> Justice Department--after more than 20 years as a bastion of 'laissez-faire'
> ideologues whose working motto is, 'Monopoly Is Good,' plus 300 or so idled
> lawyers/economists left with nothing to do but plan their retirement over
> those 2 decades--has roughly the antimonopoly competence of a local
> sheriff's office that can't organize the proverbial 2-car parade. Virtually
> zero trials, careers spent drafting toothless 'consent decrees.' How could
> the result be anything but institutional rot?
>
> Charles Mueller, Editor
> ANTITRUST LAW & ECONOMICS REVIEW
> http://webpages.metrolink.net/~cmueller
>
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