Re: the public key minefield (fwd)

[Svetlana Borisova <svet@nrcbsa.bio.nrc.ca>]

Doug Merritt wrote:
> >The goal of patents is to give a researcher a reward for his invention; to
> >give him the opportunity to make money off it.
> 
> This is incorrect; ask any patent attorney. In the U.S., anyway. Ask
> a Canadian patent attorney...but I'm 99.9% sure that Canada follows precisely
> the same legal philosophy.
> 
> In the U.S., the legal philosophy is derived from the fundamental meta-
> philosophy of its law which evolved out of British common law dating back
> to at least the Magna Carta, which is that (loosely) the purpose of law is
> for the common good. Every year there are cases in the U.S. where judges make
> a "surprising" decision that overturns the apparent letter of the law
> in favor of an appeal to the common good of society.

  I am sorry for not making my point clear.  What I was trying to say
is that the goal of a patent is to give a researcher a reward for his
invention *so that* there would be incentive for a researcher to do
research, thereby promoting invention, which is for the common good of
the society.  I was not implying, as it might have seemed from my
post, that the purpose of patents was that researchers could get rich
at the expense of the rest of the society.  I do not believe that
patents are intrisically bad.  True, the patent system has some flaws,
but it *does* provide an incentive for research, and I don't argue for
abolishment of patents since I can't think of a better system.

  My post's intention was to protest the statement that patents are
issued so that people could find alternate ways to achieve the same
purpose as the patented device does, which was my interpretation of
what the following paragraph said:

> >smb@research.att.com wrote:
> > And if you do -- well, then, the patent system has succeeded in its goals,
> > in that the monopoly assigned to someone else has stimulated you to find
> > another way to do things, and thus furthered the useful arts and
> > sciences.

  While patents are issued to provide incentive for research, it's not
by creating necessity for invention, but by giving a reward for
successful research.  Sorry for not making it clear the first time.

-- 
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Svetlana Borissova                       svet@nrcbsa.bio.nrc.ca
National Research Council Canada           Home: (613) 747-7820
Laboratory of Biological Sciences (M-54)   Work: (613) 990-7381
Protein Crystallographer                         (613) 991-6981
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