Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 01:32:44 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: cjclark@alum.mit.edu, Salvo Bartolotta <bartequi@neomedia.it>, Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, "P. U. (Uli) Kruppa" <root@pukruppa.de>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Use of the UNIX Trademark Message-ID: <3BC5592C.1E8734F6@mindspring.com> References: <000601c15084$87edd360$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <1002663600.3bc36eb096ee5@webmail.neomedia.it> <20011009231343.C387@blossom.cjclark.org> <1002731960.3bc479b899603@webmail.neomedia.it> <20011010140126.M387@blossom.cjclark.org> <20011010233539.G83192@lpt.ens.fr> <3BC53F53.967C60E7@mindspring.com> <20011011095336.A475@lpt.ens.fr>
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Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > The fact is the US has one of the best university systems in the > world, and around WW II, it also had a huge influx of some of the best > brains from Europe, which made the US a leader in research. This has > nothing to do with IP; nothing in theoretical physics is protected by > IP. The US lead is simply because of a better infrastructure. Even > so, the Japanese have dominated in some markets, such as small cars > and consumer electronics; Europe has produced some well known brands > too (the Netherlands perhaps have more multinationals per capita than > any other country, and incidentally they have a strong university > system too). You need to check the money trail. MIT has an absolutely *huge* patent portfolio, and gets not an insignificant amount of its funding from patent licenses. Last I heard, it was in the tens of billions, and that was 5 years ago. > The Japanese story is particularly interesting, because they made > hardly any technological breakthroughs themselves; they took others' > technology (like the transistor) and used it in innovative ways. The transistor was never patented; this is because it was disclosed more than a year before anyone thought it might end up being anything more than a curiosity. Bell Labs has done a lot of that sort of thing. > Their success owes nothing whatever to strong IP protection. (It's > funny that Yamaha is one of the biggest names in making classical and > flamenco Spanish guitars today, among other musical instruments. This > has nothing to do with IP protection either.) The US lead in computer > science also has nothing to do with strong IP protection; it's because > of its thriving university system, and many computer scientists are > opposed to software patents. Most computer scientst are opposed to copyright and patents as they are applied to software because of the duration; they are not necessarily opposed to the idea itself. Yes, I'm aware of Donald Knuth's state postion; I'm also aware that he owes us 5 more books, which he has not written while futzing around with TeX. 8-p. Here is a good article (Australian, even): http://www.rhyme.com.au/gd/patents.html -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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