Another rant - patenting a plot
The US Patent Office has done some pretty idiotic things (like allowing Microsoft to issue a patent on double-clicking, fertheloveofOg) but this one completely takes the cake.
Patenting a storyline.
They've not yet issued this patent, but it's published - and given how easy it seems to be to ram through a patent in the US, I wouldn't be surprised to see it become official. What's the problem, I hear the writers out there say - that means we can protect our ideas and make money out of them!
The problem is exactly the same as the problem with patenting software. In theory it protects the little guy, in practice it leads to stupid patents being issued and the guys with the most money being able to crush everybody else. COPYRIGHT protects the use of your intellectual property. It allows you to decide who can use what you've "published" (in the legal sense) and how. Patents, on the other hand, are purely restrictive. They exist solely to stop other people being able to make any changes or improvements to something you've created.
Imagine you fiendishly write out a NaNo novel within a month, and it's surprisingly good. It centres around a pair of lovers whose families hate one another and the protagonists end up dead. You think it's so good you spend the next six months re-writing it, tweaking, honing, then you send it off to a publishing house. They buy it! They publish it, it's a minor success and you get a good chunk of change for your well-written story.
Then someone comes along with a high-priced lawyer. This person has purchased the patent rights to Shakespeare's entire body of work, including Romeo and Juliet, and they take you to court for violating their patent on the "star-crossed lover" plot. You thought of your entire story from scratch but it doesn't matter - the patent clearly states that a plotline with "two feuding families whose offspring are in love" is protected by law in a system designed to encourage innovation. Congratulations, your name as an author has just been destroyed (after all, you're a plagiarist!) and you end up horribly in the red after court costs and damages.
Can you see why overly broad patents on abstract concepts are a bad idea?
Patenting a storyline.
They've not yet issued this patent, but it's published - and given how easy it seems to be to ram through a patent in the US, I wouldn't be surprised to see it become official. What's the problem, I hear the writers out there say - that means we can protect our ideas and make money out of them!
The problem is exactly the same as the problem with patenting software. In theory it protects the little guy, in practice it leads to stupid patents being issued and the guys with the most money being able to crush everybody else. COPYRIGHT protects the use of your intellectual property. It allows you to decide who can use what you've "published" (in the legal sense) and how. Patents, on the other hand, are purely restrictive. They exist solely to stop other people being able to make any changes or improvements to something you've created.
Imagine you fiendishly write out a NaNo novel within a month, and it's surprisingly good. It centres around a pair of lovers whose families hate one another and the protagonists end up dead. You think it's so good you spend the next six months re-writing it, tweaking, honing, then you send it off to a publishing house. They buy it! They publish it, it's a minor success and you get a good chunk of change for your well-written story.
Then someone comes along with a high-priced lawyer. This person has purchased the patent rights to Shakespeare's entire body of work, including Romeo and Juliet, and they take you to court for violating their patent on the "star-crossed lover" plot. You thought of your entire story from scratch but it doesn't matter - the patent clearly states that a plotline with "two feuding families whose offspring are in love" is protected by law in a system designed to encourage innovation. Congratulations, your name as an author has just been destroyed (after all, you're a plagiarist!) and you end up horribly in the red after court costs and damages.
Can you see why overly broad patents on abstract concepts are a bad idea?