Re: Results of "downloading compressed program images" request

[Craig Burley <burley@gnu.org>]

>At 10:39 AM 1/23/98 -0500, you wrote:
>>
>>I think you miss the point in the US PTO.  It is not to be "social"
>>about trade secrets, but rather to protect intellectual property that is
>>otherwise too easy to copy.  In the case of software, copyright will do
>>just fine.
>
>I don't understand Richard's point. But the purpose of Patents is both to
>provide protection to the inventor's economic interests while at the same
>time making the information freely available (social benifit). After 21
>years (I believe) anyone is free to use it as well. 

The inventor's economic interests, in the sense you mean, are
perfectly well served by trade-secret law.  (I think patents
actually "started" prior to that law, but a similar effect is
achived just by keeping stuff secret.  I believe TS law merely
provides for legal remedies when employees or other contacts
"leak" stuff claimed to be trade secrets.  Without this law,
just keeping stuff secret works pretty well.)

So, the *purpose* of patents is to encourage publication of
knowledge that might otherwise be kept secret, or kept under
trade secret law.

The *mechanism* by which this is accomplish is to offer certain
legal and economic incentives.

However, there are other mechanisms that could accomplish the
same purpose, to greater or lesser extents.

Giving the patented/secret material legal status as a form
of capital is a typical ploy of a society that is based on
capitalistic notions, which happens to be true of ours, and
I think happens to be the best approach to most socioeconomic
problems.

But if the mechanism becomes unwieldy, or unfair, as I believe
has certainly happened due to putting too many "marginal"
kinds of knowledge (such as algorithms, aka software) into
the same category of capital, then it is quite reasonable to
reconsider the mechanism separately from, or carefully in
conjunction with, reconsidering the underlying purpose, which
is to keep people from keeping too many important things secret.

        tq vm, (burley)