On Mon, 11 Apr 2005 14:57:52 -0700, Jim Kelley
wrote:
Why would anyone pay to license something for which the copyright has
expired?

Hi Jim,

That is simply repetition. The extension of copyright makes that
moot. Can you name a single Disney product with copyright that was
not licensed as a trademark right? No one is seriously interested in
Little Mermaid knock-offs but the Chinese. And how many dozen are
Disney going to sell to Chinese at $20 a pop when they can only afford
25 cents?

When the capitalists go into China with Hammer and Tong over copyright
issues, they are not selling anything. And since the introduction of
Linux as a substantial option, the Chinese have shown even less
interest in M$. There's the payoff of investments in Hammer and Tongs
on a sliding scale.

Really, the laws are manifestly and explicitly for
intimidation alone.

No. They are also meant to encourage R&D, advance the state of the art,
and promote entepreneurism.

This lies somewhere between misty-eyed dreaming and the soft-porn of
industry pleas. There is absolutely no grant nor entitlement, much
less funding that is vested into R&D by the government's supporting
monopoly. Copyrights and Patents are boldfacedly proclaimed as rights
of enforcement ONLY. No R&D lab I've been in had a legal department,
and most companies that did have a legal department, bought their R&D
and simply did the marketing. If ever there was a case study of this,
it is M$. Chairman Bill's dad was NOT a mathematician NOR a
scientist, he was a Lawyer. He couldn't care less about copyright of
DOS1 because by the time any issue made its way through the courts, no
one would be using it.

Can you name the writer of DOS1? So much the value of copyright for a
trillion dollar industry.

An entrepreneur is the other guy with the money, not the one with the
intellectual property. I've pitched against more than $100Million
worth of these types, and most of them would stare daggers at you if
you uttered you had Patent pending. They know how to do that
themselves, and they certainly don't want competition seeing their
names as assignees in public records.

Jim, you got any of your own patents? Ever copyright any substantial
work? How much did it tilt the balance ledger? There's reality.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC