On Saturday 26 June 2010 21:16:13 you wrote: > Supposed you are a garage mechanic who spends years developing a new and > efficient carburetor. This is a fairly tedious time consuming and costly > affair for individuals. However, if you invent this new carburetor, you > apply for a patent by disclosing the manner in which the carburetor > functions so that on the one hand people understand how your carburetor > works and can build on top of it and on the other hand those big companies > who have the resources to can't just copy the design and mass produce the > carburetor on their conveyor belts. >
there are always two schools of thought regarding patents - one that they encourage innovation and the other that they discourage innovation. There are enough arguments on both sides to convince anyone. What I find strange is the view that patents are bad in some fields - software, medicine and good in other fields. But the point is how does innovation come about. When one says linus wrote linux - actually what he did was modify minix and release it as linux. When RMS wrote gcc - he took an existing compiler and modified it. So it is when a guy in Coimbatore made a submersible pump - he took an existing pump and modified it. Yes, there have been inventions that are totally from scratch and totally revolutionary and not built on work done by some one before (I cannot off hand remember one - but there must be any number) - so the concept that one has to pay royalty or get permission (or maybe even be denied permission) to use pre existing work ... -- regards kg http://lawgon.livejournal.com/ _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
