Wouter van Ooijen wrote: -------- > I think you will have to make up your mind. Free trade (including labour > contracts) or regulations (including patents)? on the contrary, as in many things i feel a hybridized approach will work best, if properly balanced and implemented. while free trade is good in many ways, it also has many flaws in terms of it's effect on society which can be reduced by careful (but not excessive) regulation. of course this winds up being dynamic as the two forces fight for dominance sometimes when things become politically abstracted too far. > IMHO the patent principle in itself can help innovation (it has done so > in the past, and still does in some areas like medicine), but the > current practice (trivial patents, court procedures instead of > pre-patent examination) is a serious problem. i essentially agree with all that you have said above. my biggest problem with the current patent system is the ridiculous number of truly trivial patents. any one who gets "nasa tech briefs" (or is it "notes") knows what i mean, any time an employee builds anything they apply for and receive multiple patents, on even the simplest and most obvious design. at the same time the patent system is granting patents all too often that cover prior art and well known methods and totally fails to properly test the applicants claims to "uniqueness". > In my country (Netherlands) IIRC any idea from an employee that can be > seen as part of his work is automatically (and without extra payment) > owned by his employer, any idea that is beyond this but 'generated' > during work is owned by the employer but a reasonable extra payment is > required, the rest is owned by the employee. A labour contract that > tries to arrange things differently will have serious trouble in court. That seems fair, to an extent. here in the u.s. the employer often has the employee agree that any and all patents they may develop will belong to the company without any compensation to the employee, in some cases this takes the form of a free license, in others it takes the form of the company owning the license. and as i said, the most ridiculous and extreme case i found where the power company wants to own any thing that any former employee ever comes up with in any field with no compensation, even when that employee was a simple meter reader. surely this is an extreme and unreasonable demand for the employer to make, and clearly it removes all incentive a present or former employee could have to pursue any patent, hence any ideas will tend to be left in the drawer undeveloped. i certainly agree that anything you develop at work is reasonably property of your' employer, though i agree with the requirement to provide them with some reasonable compensation. sadly in the u.s. employees, even technical people, are frequently viewed by management in the same terms they view furniture or any other equipment, i.e. something to be exploited and used and not appreciated as unique even when they come up with something brilliant. -- Bush himself, perhaps the truest of Wilson's disciples, has gone even further, declaring the United States' purpose is to eliminate evil itself.-- Does Bush think he is doing God's will, or does he think he is God? Such men are always remembered as the Lunatic tyrants they are, eventually. _______________________________________________ http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist