Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1993 21:45:27 -1000 From: steveth@netcom.com (Steve Thomas) Message-Id: Organization: VisionAire, San Francisco, CA Subject: Patents and Copyrights In article <9311232154.tn249184@aol.com> writes: >[...] > Patents are worthless to any but the very rich. Don't believe me, research >it! >From what I understand, it's not that difficult to *get* a patent, the difficulty is *defending* a patent-violation. In other words, the patent office might issue you a patent, but it doesn't really mean anything until you take it to court for the first time--where the validity of the patent is completely (and often more carefully) reevaluated. For instance, apparently there is a French man that has a French patent on the use of bungee-cord to secure the leading edge of a kite. I'm certainly no attorney (French law, no less), but to me this would seem like an awfully obvious thing to do, and I can't imagine this standing up in court (on the grounds that the patent is "too obvious"). I know from my experience in the computer biz that the patent office will often issue patents that it/The Law has little to no experience with. There are cases where the simplest of programming constructs are said to be patented--simple to a computer programmer, mabey, but not to the patent office of a long time ago. Kites may be in the same situation. >From the sounds of things, this new bridal that Dean is talking about would be quite eligible for a patent... Copyrights are for *expressions* of ideas. A recent example of a copyright case was Microsoft vs. Apple. From what I understood of it, Apple's (Xerox's, but we won't get into that) *basic* idea of a graphical user interface with windows, pull-down menus, etc. are just that: basic *ideas*. As such, the court found that Microsoft was free to implement its own expression of the ideas. The "Garbage Can" icon on the Mac--used to "throw stuff away"--was an *expression* of an idea, and as such is the property of Apple. To apply this to kites, a kite's graphic--the series of panels/design of the panels/applique--is most likely copyrightible... Other than that, I'm not sure... Anyhow, that's my $.02 from an arm-chair attorney... Are there any lawyers/wanna-be lawyers out there that want to add anything to this? ;-) -- _______ Steve Thomas steveth@netcom.com "I'm doing just fine. I took stock in a Mace company right before society crumbled." -- Selma/Simpson's = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =