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Continuing fun with software patentsContinuing fun with software patentsPosted Feb 27, 2003 19:26 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)In reply to: Continuing fun with software patents by iabervon Parent article: Continuing fun with software patents >And I think the idea that Amazon wouldn't have come up with such a system >had they not thought they would be able to prevent other people from >copying them 4 years later is ridiculous... Those are very good points. And the other half of the reason that Amazon would have invented this with or without patent protection is that it was cheap to invent. Patents do the job only where 1) it costs money to invent, which money cannot be recovered if others are free to copy the results; or 2) the inventor could profit from the invention without disclosing it to anyone. I'd like to point out that even (1) is not an original intent of patents. A patent is fundamentally a deal between the public and an inventor, where the inventor tells the public what he invented and the public gives him some exclusive rights to the invention in return. "Patent" is Latin for "laying open."
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