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Re: [LUG] Obama on Patient Law...

 

On 16/02/13 07:09, Simon Avery wrote:
>
> What's this got to do with linux?

US patent law is why most GNU/Linux distros don't ship with all the
multimedia codecs you might want, because to ship them in America costs
money per copy in licensing fees.

That they could ship them in Europe and don't is another issue but I
imagine it is hard to run multiple copies, and deal with the legal
details when you can just make it an end user problem.

Although to be honest not sure Obama understands the issues.

The firms trading in patents are a sign that patent legislation is doing
what it is suppose to, and that the market in patent licensing is
effective and healthy.

You can't make "ideas" into property, and complain that when there is a
market in that property, that you don't like the people who happen to
own an "idea" because they have specialised in owning ideas. This
specialism is the kind of thing you see in markets that are working, it
would be more worrying if patents were only owned by firms that made
things, as it would suggest that there was no market and thus patent
legislation hadn't worked.

The problem is patenting software itself. He could try and harmonize
with European legislation and drop "software only" patents. Indeed there
is precious little evidence that patents are good things, or achieve
what they set out to achieve, so heck abolish patents entirely. But it
won't happen because patents make monopolies, monopolies make people
rich, and well America has the best government money can buy.

 Simon

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