Re: [Fwd: United States Patent: 6,862,609]

From: Trever L. Adams
Date: Thu Mar 03 2005 - 15:25:42 EST


On Thu, 2005-03-03 at 08:48 -0700, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> Patent law in the US is based on section 113 of the United States
> Constitution, and patents
> are not going away.

Merkey aren't you supposed to be a lawyer? Unless you do some funky
concatenation of articles and sections you can't find a section 113 (and
probably not even then) in the Constitution.

It is Article 1 Section 8. It also says they shall have that power and
that the intent is to promote the advances of arts and sciences. It
doesn't say that patents are the methods to be used. It doesn't say 17
years (or the whole 70/life+75 crap for copyrights). I think many very
intelligent people have and will show that allowing patents on ideas
(software patents are only this) tend to destroy such advances.

Yeah, yeah, from time to time there is someone who seems to show that
they help... however, 90% of those seem to be backed by MS or SCO.
Interesting considering many people, including Bill Gates, said quite
differently in the past.

Trever
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759

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