Re: Very good discussion by me of Intellectual Property Rights ;-)

Max M (maxm@maxmcorp.dk)
Mon, 4 Jan 1999 12:55:53 +0100

From: Samael <samael@dial.pipex.com>

>But comanies won't invest millions of dollars in RD if someone else can
look
>at what they;ve donw and just copy them without paying them back
for it.
>
>Do you really want to live in a world where everyone spends their time
>waiting for someone else to do some research?

It is a very good and relevant argument, but it has yet to be tested that development will be stopped if patents were stopped. Companies shurely would not cease to exist, they would spend their money on something else and shurely they would still do minimal research to keep an edge. Perhaps r&d would just be more distributed as the wealth made by new inventions would be distributed too. Curiosity and the small competitive edge could probably take us a long way.

I don't know, and we will not know until it is tested.

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# Max M Rasmussen,   New Media Director    http://www.normik.dk   Denmark
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