In article ,
John Smith wrote:

Dave:
Yes, I agree, your information seems very linear to my own understanding.
And, yes, I too am cynical of congress and its' motives here. I certainly
support an authors' sole ownership of his intellectual material, and I am
willing to acknowledge a right to his immediate/living family. When it gets
out to his grandkids, I believe there is a greater argument; that is the
publics right to amass knowledge is of a greater importance than giving the
grandkids a free ride and free money, not to mention the media organizations
who exploit these laws to the detriment of societies goals and needs...
A free ride by the grandkids is probably not to their benefit anyway--one
can only truly appreciate that which he/she has himself/herself earned....
But hey, that is only my personal opinion...

Well, that was pretty much the opinion of the Founders who set up the
legal structure for patent, copyright, and trade-secret protection.

The original motivation and justification for these sorts of law -
which have the effect of placing Government law-enforcement power in
the service of private individuals - was *not* to ensure the
enrichment of the inventors and authors. The original goal was to
increase the public good.

The reasoning is that by providing inventors and authors with a
*limited* protection of their creative works (i.e. exclusive rights,
for some period of time), it would motivate inventors to invent and
also to reveal their inventions to others in detail (the latter being
required for a patent) rather than keep their inventions secret.
Similarly, it would motivate people to write, create paintings, etc.

The legal protection was made limited in time... and I believe that
this was done specifically so that the inventions and creations
*would* continue to enter the public domain so that other people could
build upon them in the future, further enriching our cultural and
technical heritage.

A tradeoff was offered for those who wished to keep their inventions
secret, and maintain an indefinite "lock" on the exclusivity. The
alternate to a patent (which requires disclosure) is a trade secret.
The way that the law was originally structured, was that a trade
secret had to be kept *secret* in order to be protected... i.e. via
physical protection, legal nondisclosure agreements with the parties
to whom it was revealed, etc. A trade secret did not carry with it
any protection against independent re-invention or reverse
engineering. If you invent a better widget, keep its details secret,
make it for several years, and then somebody independently re-invents
the same device or process, you didn't have the legal right to
prosecute them or shut them down.

Unfortunately (in my opinion), both copyright and trade-secret
protection have been excessively widened over the past few decades.
Copyright has been repeatedly extended to the point that it's now
nearly unlimited in duration... literary inventions which have been
part of American culture for many decades are still "locked up" as the
commercial properties of the licensees of their authors. Similarly,
"trade secret" protection seems to have been widened, to the point
where companies feel free to ask the courts to shut down discussion
and distribution of information involving the independent re-invention
or reverse engineering of technologies that those companies feel is
proprietary, even if none of the people involved in the discussion or
reverse engineering are under any sort of trade-secret agreement.

Seems to me that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of
"protect the revenue of the inventors and authors" and too far away
from "promote the greater public good."

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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