Link: http://www.etc-architect.com/?p=129
From ETC-Architect » IT Architect Global | Enterprise Architect, Global | Solution Architect, Global
Now there are many articles on patents. I in the 5 years when I did my podcast also did an episode on patents, which was the most downloaded episode with over 300K downloads for only one episode. Now there are some areas where it makes sense to protect intellectual property and it is not always done through patents. The first one is that of secrecy as practised by the manufacturers of the most common soft drink. This protection works often quite well, as if you disassemble information you can really never reach the perfection of the original. On the other hand if you patent anything you make it public with many companies then trying to solve the approach from a different angle and such avoiding patent litigation.
This kind of mechanism is often also the reason that you will find many things patented that you could never protect through secrecy. And that is usually where patents get in the area of stupidity, as you can patented a finger movement that you never can keep secret. Additional you can patent natural reproductive processes such as GM modified seed and when some of the produce of that seed is carried by the wind to another place they are liable to pay for the patent use. This also applies to all patents in ICT where you have a mix of intellectual property that you protect by secrecy or that you cannot. So my first starting point is that it should only be possible to protect things that can be protected by secrecy only. This would clearly solve a lot of problems.
You make argue that this will not address two important areas. The first one is that you may want to offer something for free, but allow others to modify it and then sell those modifications, such as you can find with the Apache license model. The second area where you want to assert that certain intellectual property can not ever be commercialised, such as with the GPL licenses.
However both the arguments have nothing to do with patents, as patents are just one way to protect intellectual property and licenses are a another way. So I still think that either patents should only apply on things that could also be protected by secrecy or to scrap them altogether. Again I am not arguing against the protection of intellectual property, just against one method used, which is a fine but important distinction often forgotten in the discussion.
