The Danger of Patenting Ideas

Richard Stallman raises the bar in this discussion of patent, copyright and trademark law at a Chaos computer seminar in Germany:

In order to think clearly about patent issues, the first thing you have to do is disentangle patent law from copyright law and from trademark law; various different laws that say totally different things and have essentially nothing in common. But many people have been misled into thinking that these ideas are really similar. They are typically misled by the use of the term ‘intellectual property’. People are told that patents are a kind of ‘intellectual property’ and copyright is a kind of ‘intellectual property’, and people who hear this end up thinking that there is some substantial thing called intellectual property, some principle, and that copyrights and patents are just variations in little details. Nothing could be further from the truth. –R. Stallman

Duration 1:36:18

English with German introduction (Englisch mit Einleitung auf Deutsch)

About 20 years ago, the Australian government commissioned a study of the patent system, which concluded there was no evidence at all that Australia benefited by having a patent system… and they said if it were not for international pressure they would recommend abolishing the patent system. –R. Stallman

Be sure to check out the common sense analogy to music at 1:24:24