| You seem to be operating from the premise the creator of an idea has some sort of intrinsic right to solely profit from ideas of his own "creation". There is no intrinsic right there, ideas are not physical property, we should not treat them like they are. I put creation in quotes, because of an issue that nicely demonstrates how fundamentally different ideas are from physical property: consider the many scientific/mathematic discoveries[1] that were made in parallel around the world, with no communication between the parties, who gains the right to "own" these ideas, and why should they? Did not somebody else take exactly the same amount of effort and process to create the exact same idea? This even applies to very complex systems that are far from obvious, quite novel, and form the foundations of our modern world. People need to get past the idea that somebody has a brilliant idea one day out of the blue, and the world is changed forever because of it. Every idea anyone has ever had owes almost everything to what proceeded it, and the environment it arose in, co-discovery/invention is very solid proof of that. "If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." When you take the time to realize the very thing that propels us forward is the ability to build on existing ideas, you realize how patents and IP law in general are impeding, not encouraging. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus#Modern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russels_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_the_telephone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_priority_di... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy (there are several more, but i do not have the time just now to find them) |