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September 18, 2005

Upping the ante: Patent + copyright

Although plagiarism regulations and copyright law arose from a common discourse, in the nineteenth century they separated, with one becoming local and often unwritten code based in morality, the other becoming law based in economic profit. Another fundamental difference in the two is that the notion of plagiarism includes the appropriation of ideas, whereas copyright does not.

Not yet, anyhow. But soon? (via Phosita)

I'm not liking this at all. Patent law has long been separate from copyright, but in the move that the enterprising Mr. Knight is pursuing, patent law would take up the slack in copyright law, protecting ideas as well as words. "Great!" the plagiarism police might respond. "But wait!" I would answer. Haven't we gone far enough in the capitalistic mania that has trampled all over fair use? Do we really want more Sonny Bono-style expansion of author's rights in intellectual property?

At the end of this week I'll be attending the Michigan conference on Originality, Imitation, and Plagiarism. One session is devoted to "The Current Plagiarism Panic"; and Chuck Bazerman and Martine Courant Rife will each be talking about fair use. And I will be reveling in conversations about intellectual property that do not take economic profit as the Prime Directive.

Posted by senioritis at September 18, 2005 04:57 PM

Comments

Becky,

Thanks for finding this piece. Very scary, but also logical. When Amazon patented their one click checkout, a cry went out. Analogies abounded --one writer compared a patent on that idea (not the coding they used to do it, but the idea) as akin to one supermarket coming up with express checkout for those with 10 or fewer items and then putting in a patent so other stores couldn't do the same thing. But in the end, Amazon got to keep the patent. A review of that battle and some of the arguments back and forth might be a good first step in fighting this version of patent over reach.

Posted by: Nick Carbone at September 20, 2005 02:51 PM