“Two Cultures” — two perceptions of scarcity…
LinuxWorld has a breakdown of the difference between hackers and think-tankers and why software patents look so different depending on who you know…
To the ‘think tank’ types, lawyers are basically free and software innovation is hard to get. Most of the think tanks are in Washington, DC, where you can’t swing a cat without hitting a bunch of lawyers. To a think tank staffer, it’s just as obvious that you’d get a lawyer to patent your software idea as that you’d back up your files. Lawyers are background noise, and software innovation is something that you see on the cover of Wired and wonder ‘how did they do that?’
Interesting point, yet here I am, with notepads full of software ideas, right in Washington, D.C. — consulting for the patent office, no less — and I still don’t know a single intellectual property attorney. I don’t own a single patent — software, process or otherwise. I’ve never applied for one, nor do I ever intend to. Of course, even if I did, the process would be so frustrating I wouldn’t likely get very far.
In the real world, transaction costs around software patents—mainly the price of lawyers—matter way more than the think tankers are able to see, what with taking swarms of lawyers for granted. And software innovation, to most people, isn’t just a nuisance [sic] that leaves you with a stack of notes and half-baked programs, it’s actually rare.
Say I did — I miraculously waded through the reams of red tape, through rejection after rejection until I ultimately forced my [obvious and overly broad] brilliant idea through the system — enforcement would still be completely futile (thus monetization completely impossible). I’d be stuck in a slightly different, just as dizzying endless loop of a justice system; no time to nourish a single creative endeavor while on the wasteful slog for government-mandated profits.
The only winners in this game are the weasels, the bureaucracy-loving rent-seekers. Is this game good for innovation? For the progress of science and useful arts? For society?
[via: TLF]