Jean-Francois Avon (JFA Technologies, QC, Canada) wrote:
Man's survival tool is his mind.
Patents and copyright are establishing the ownership and protection the result of the exercise of his survival tool.
Therefore they are good.
To try to eliminate them is equivalent to promote slavery.
I take some disagreement with that. With patents, there is a problem of large companies owning them yet doing nothing with them except suing other companies or individuals. For example, look at arithmetic coding: there are many patents owned on it, yet a lot of software using this means of compression may be in violation of the patents... are the patent-owners publishing software or makingh efforts to license it widely? If anything, such patents are getting in the way of using many algorithms. Patents would be better if there was a good-faith attempt on the part of the holder to "use it or lose it". Somebody sitting on a patent and doing nothing with it deserves to lose it after a number of years.