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Originally Posted by QuantumIguana
With eternal patent, anyone wanting to make a bow and arrow would have to pay the holder of the patents of the pointed stick, the arrow, the fletch, the bow and the string. The number of people who would need to be paid would be staggering. Metallurgy would require paying people for thousands of years of innovations.
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Not necessarily although it would definitely change how licensing is handled. We could look to music copyrights for examples-a radio station doesn't negotiate licensing fees with the owner of every song they play. What they negotiate is a fee to the musicians' union (ASCAP, I think it is). The union then handles disbursing the fee to the individual musicians. Still, I suspect you're right about stifling innovation. Or maybe progress as some of the innovators would probably spend their time 're-inventing the wheel' to avoid paying the fee rather than going on to invent the wagon (or car).
Quote:
Originally Posted by QuantumIguana
About every year someone does a remake of Alice in Wonderland. We're better off because people can reinterpret these works.
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Not a good example IMO-I've seen the last couple of remakes & believe we'd have been better off if they hadn't been made. Tastes differ, of course.