Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
It doesn't become intellectual property until it's turned into a book or a song or a painting or an invention, etc. Until then, it's an idea.
Patent law in the US is a farce and in need of drastic overhaul.
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You seem to have a terribly concrete notion of what intellectual property is. For something to be copyright, it certainly needs to be set in a fixed form, but that's because copyright is a very limited form of intellectual property.
A patent is specifically for the kind of intellectual property that can't be simply expressed in a fixed form, and so gives wider protection. It would do an inventor no good to get protection for the specific form of their invention, only for someone to be able to avoid paying royalties by making minor changes to the form of the invention while still using the creative idea at the heart of it.
It's no secret that patent law (& copyright law, IMO) are in need of attention. The problem is that there's no agreement on what kind of attention they need!
The main good point about patent law is that the length of protection hasn't extended significantly. And that's because it's not in enough businesses' interests for it to be extended.