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More on storyline patents
Nov. 4th, 2005 12:58 pmArticle by Richard Stallman, from the Guardian UK.
A post on the Right to Create blog, which I am now bookmarking.
The--I am not making this up--company these people have set up to crank out storyline patent applications.
The press release from Fucktards, Inc., your slimy patent attorney firm, ready and willing to screw creative Americans! With a smile!
This has got to be stopped. I'm serious--please write your Congressperson. Explain that allowing patents on stories will bring innovation in America to a screeching halt. Stallman's article has a great example case involving Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. If someone had patented three story elements that appeared in Hugo's novel, Hugo would have been liable for three separate infringements. And what if someone else had a patent on a slightly different story element, one that was broader, and that also appeared in his novel? There's a potential for one novelist to infringe on multiple patents held by multiple parties. And you know that if this guy's patent gets approved, the big media conglomerates are going to be all over this. "Hey, you mean we can make MORE MONEY by making people pay US to write screenplays/books for us? Bonus!" And the lawyers will descend in their thousands, and the sky will be darkened, blah blah blah. You, Mr. Joe Writer: can you afford to take out patents on all your ideas? No? Oh well! Hope you can afford the licensing fees.
The potential end result of all this, if indeed the application is approved? Independents could get priced out of the market because they won't be able to afford the licensing fees. Even if writers' execution of ideas is still protected by copyright laws, the ideas themselves will no longer be protected. I mean, you still won't be able to plagiarize (say) Stephen King's work, but it won't matter--because he won't own the ideas within his own work. The studios and publishing companies will. They will hold the patents... and all the cards.
Me, I'm lookin' at Canada.
Tools.
A post on the Right to Create blog, which I am now bookmarking.
The--I am not making this up--company these people have set up to crank out storyline patent applications.
The press release from Fucktards, Inc., your slimy patent attorney firm, ready and willing to screw creative Americans! With a smile!
This has got to be stopped. I'm serious--please write your Congressperson. Explain that allowing patents on stories will bring innovation in America to a screeching halt. Stallman's article has a great example case involving Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. If someone had patented three story elements that appeared in Hugo's novel, Hugo would have been liable for three separate infringements. And what if someone else had a patent on a slightly different story element, one that was broader, and that also appeared in his novel? There's a potential for one novelist to infringe on multiple patents held by multiple parties. And you know that if this guy's patent gets approved, the big media conglomerates are going to be all over this. "Hey, you mean we can make MORE MONEY by making people pay US to write screenplays/books for us? Bonus!" And the lawyers will descend in their thousands, and the sky will be darkened, blah blah blah. You, Mr. Joe Writer: can you afford to take out patents on all your ideas? No? Oh well! Hope you can afford the licensing fees.
The potential end result of all this, if indeed the application is approved? Independents could get priced out of the market because they won't be able to afford the licensing fees. Even if writers' execution of ideas is still protected by copyright laws, the ideas themselves will no longer be protected. I mean, you still won't be able to plagiarize (say) Stephen King's work, but it won't matter--because he won't own the ideas within his own work. The studios and publishing companies will. They will hold the patents... and all the cards.
Me, I'm lookin' at Canada.
Tools.
