What the hell is intellectual property? (can you own an idea?)

[hiphophippy]

Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce.

IP is divided into two categories: Industrial property, which includes inventions (patents), trademarks, industrial designs, and geographic indications of source; and Copyright, which includes literary and artistic works such as novels, poems and plays, films, musical works, artistic works such as drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures, and architectural designs. Rights related to copyright include those of performing artists in their performances, producers of phonograms in their recordings, and those of broadcasters in their radio and television programs.


Definition: The ownership of ideas. Unlike tangible assets to your business such as computers or your office, intellectual property is a collection of ideas and concepts.


I often wonder about intellectual property? What is intellectual property? What does that mean to you?

If I think of a dog with six legs is that my intellectual property? DO I have the rights to every conception of a six legged dog? What if I die. Is that Idea still my intellectual property?


What does everyone else think about intellectual property? discuss.

 

[jeckel]

Without intellectual property I wouldn't have money.

I’m a computer programmer, I write thousands of lines of code, it takes hours and hours to do, but when you look at it, its just words on a page. the only reason I can sell those words is because of the order I have put them in. someone else could quite easily arrange the same words in the same way and have to pay me for the use of them because I did it first... well, that’s at least how its supposed to happen . I started for a client the other day and found an app i created in 1999 that they were using lol... technically I still own that and should be getting royalties off it .

 

[radiohshifter]

i never understood this concept, ideas are based around our thoughts, and surroundings, if anyone else thought about something with the same surroundings, they could conceivably come up with the same idea. if you own the product of thinking when surrounded by certain things, then theoretically that makes you own all of the things that led you to that thought, which is dead wrong, imo.

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

I think that defenders of intellectual property as a societal institution take it as given that enforcing a person's exclusive right to [re]produce a unique and complicated work is necessary for most people to be motivated to produce quality unique and complicated things. In other words, most people will only expend great effort to produce major innovations if they can be assured they'll profit proportionally to how popularly their creation sells throughout society, not just locally. In reductionistic terms, intellectual property is an attempt to use greed as fuel for greater dynamism in the arts and sciences.

Then I think of people like Benjamin Franklin, who never patented any of his inventions, because he wanted them to be mass produced for the good of all. He certainly didn't die a poor man.

Personally, I question how efficacious intellectual property laws really are at increasing innovative striving. I'd be interested in combing through world history and seeing if there is any correlation between times of intellectual and cultural stagnation, and times when no such concept of intellectual property was enforced, either from a higher authority or from social mores. I have a feeling no such correlation can be found, and that many societies have experienced times of florid innovation despite anyone being free to copy from anyone. I think in these settings, what defended skilled innovators' livelihoods was a combination of people being confined to their local areas, as well as codes of secrecy surrounding techniques of production. Artisans could make their crafts sufficiently complicated as to make them hard to copy, and then tell their customers to be wary of inferior imitators.

But what about nowadays? We live in a world where information, objects, and people travel further, faster, and more faithfully than ever before. We live in a world where keeping secrets is hard, and pulling things apart for their secrets is relatively easy. It could be that without intellectual property laws, you'd select for just those innovators (like Franklin) who innovated for the love of it, as well as those profiteers who innovated the fastest and in ways most cryptic and complicated. But it could also mean that there just wouldn't be as much innovation, since for most people there'd be no money in it, and our culture would stagnate. It's hard to say.

There's no doubt that intellectual property laws have allowed some rather lackluster inventors to become unduly rich. Is it fair that the inventor of the pumpkin-shaped leaf bag and the one hit pop star from 2 decades ago will never have to work a day in their lives? I suppose defenders of intellectual property would say that such people are an inevitable side product of a system that grants due riches to inventors of truly valuable works.

I haven't made up my mind on this one.

 

[Legerity]

It's an interesting concept. It makes me think about the nature of though/ideas and whether or not they are actually our own or whether they simply come through us. And our own ideas are often a blend of other people's ideas that we have encountered combined with our own individual unique perspective. But in that case the majority of the idea may actually "belong" to others. I love Girl Talk's music and there's all sorts of debate as to whether or not he has the right to mash up other people's songs the way he does. In the end it becomes something unique but it's built up from other people's material.

I can understand both sides to the argument. I don't really care enough to have any opinion. A brief moment of inspiration doesn't necessarily require any effort it can just come. Has that person earned the right to call it their own and prevent others from using it?

And in the end the patent doesn't even necessarily go to the person who first had the idea. It goes to the first person that decides to patent it, even if 1000 before him have had the same idea. It's impossible to know if a particular thought passed through somebody's mind before or not.

I don't really know enough about it but it is kind of an odd concept to me. I guess it makes sense if capitalism makes sense.

 

[hiphophippy]

I think that defenders of intellectual property as a societal institution take it as given that enforcing a person's exclusive right to [re]produce a unique and complicated work is necessary for most people to be motivated to produce quality unique and complicated things. In other words, most people will only expend great effort to produce major innovations if they can be assured they'll profit proportionally to how popularly their creation sells throughout society, not just locally. In reductionistic terms, intellectual property is an attempt to use greed as fuel for greater dynamism in the arts and sciences.

Then I think of people like Benjamin Franklin, who never patented any of his inventions, because he wanted them to be mass produced for the good of all. He certainly didn't die a poor man.

Personally, I question how efficacious intellectual property laws really are at increasing innovative striving. I'd be interested in combing through world history and seeing if there is any correlation between times of intellectual and cultural stagnation, and times when no such concept of intellectual property was enforced, either from a higher authority or from social mores. I have a feeling no such correlation can be found, and that many societies have experienced times of florid innovation despite anyone being free to copy from anyone. I think in these settings, what defended skilled innovators' livelihoods was a combination of people being confined to their local areas, as well as codes of secrecy surrounding techniques of production. Artisans could make their crafts sufficiently complicated as to make them hard to copy, and then tell their customers to be wary of inferior imitators.

But what about nowadays? We live in a world where information, objects, and people travel further, faster, and more faithfully than ever before. We live in a world where keeping secrets is hard, and pulling things apart for their secrets is relatively easy. It could be that without intellectual property laws, you'd select for just those innovators (like Franklin) who innovated for the love of it, as well as those profiteers who innovated the fastest and in ways most cryptic and complicated. But it could also mean that there just wouldn't be as much innovation, since for most people there'd be no money in it, and our culture would stagnate. It's hard to say.

There's no doubt that intellectual property laws have allowed some rather lackluster inventors to become unduly rich. Is it fair that the inventor of the pumpkin-shaped leaf bag and the one hit pop star from 2 decades ago will never have to work a day in their lives? I suppose defenders of intellectual property would say that such people are an inevitable side product of a system that grants due riches to inventors of truly valuable works.

I haven't made up my mind on this one.

I belive that this most relates to linux. which is a free unix based system. most notable being Ubuntu (and red hat and debian) These are worked on by interested individuals for the good of all. Look into free ware. There are thousands of free warez that you an just download. and if you're a programmer you download them andadapt them to your own needs and re release them with attribution tot he original creator. Its pretty rad.

 

[alasdairm]

...ideas are based around our thoughts, and surroundings, if anyone else thought about something with the same surroundings, they could conceivably come up with the same idea.

perhaps. but there's a premium for coming up with it first.

if you own the product of thinking when surrounded by certain things, then theoretically that makes you own all of the things that led you to that thought

that makes absolutely no sense.

alasdair

 

[herbavore]

I actually know a woman whose grandfather invented (her claim) the mathematical term "google" and has been spending most of her time and energy trying to sue Google for royalties over the use of the word. This woman has a good job, plenty to eat, does not live in a war-zone and (used to) have a lot of friends until this obsession overtook her. She calls it her grandfather's intellectual property and therefore considers it her inheritance to receive royalties from its use.
What a world.....

 

[hiphophippy]

I actually know a woman whose grandfather invented (her claim) the mathematical term "google" and has been spending most of her time and energy trying to sue Google for royalties over the use of the word. This woman has a good job, plenty to eat, does not live in a war-zone and (used to) have a lot of friends until this obsession overtook her. She calls it her grandfather's intellectual property and therefore considers it her inheritance to receive royalties from its use.
What a world.....

Money makes people crazy

 

[Scenicmind]

Sometimes or at times persons can have the same thought. I read that somewhere. It's tough to accuse; whatever happens happens

 

[echo off]

Sometimes or at times persons can have the same thought. I read that somewhere. It's tough to accuse; whatever happens happens

i swear, half the time i come up with a movie idea that i think is actually decent, it comes out 2 years later
i always curse the bastards for plucking my idea from the singular subconscious... as though that's not where i got it from too XD

 

[CoffeeDrinker]

I think of intellectual property rights in the pharmaceutical industry is kinda hindering the overall spreading use of the drugs, so anyone can get an affordable medication via more suppliers to the same amount of demand. I think the way that our pharmaceutical system operates is fucked up, but, under it, it makes sense, sort of, why the meds are so expensive, because of all the R&D time going into it, and all the man hours going into the development of each new drug. What do I know...
haha, my doctor called me up the other day to see if I wanted to participate in a drug trial. Hmmm...I think I might do it....

 

[echo off]

^^ it's even worse in genetics. not only is some of the DNA inside you owned as intellectual property, but even worse, the tests to identify those DNA strands is also owned. pretty sure one such genome is an indicator of hereditary cervical cancer, but you can't find out unless you pay the $2000 to the company that owns the copyright, and then you have to pay your doctor to do the actual work.

 

[ebola?]

I think that intellectual property is simply a fundamentally different kind of thing from actual, material property. Intellectual property is a pattern of possible activity; material property is a specific piece of matter. From there, the question is whether it makes sense to regulate these socially similarly, via the market-system of transferable ownership. Both types of property are at some point the distillation of human labor. Just as the current means of production of material goods are social (factories requiring multiple individuals to operate, so are means of production of ideas (all insight standing on the shoulders of giants). Thus, direction of production and distribution should aim to benefit the producers, not a group of individuals who own but don't produce, and should thus be organized socially.

This is all a moot point: technological advancement will render intellectual property implausible soon.

ebola

 

[Shrooms00087]

This is all a moot point: technological advancement will render intellectual property implausible soon.

What makes you say that?

I believe in intellectual property but only in form of writing/art something that isn't likely to be replicated if not directly tracing former works.

As far as technology/genes the only question is if by making it you follow of a mathematical formula that will lead you to the exact same result (different from literature/art etc). Currently all corporations do is find out these formula's first and then claim it to be property and if ever replicated want "their fair share". Which is the very purpose of hindering growth outside of permitted areas (Like Monsanto's monopoly on high yield genetic crops). With these examples the intent is clear, hinder development and keep the world dependent on corporations.

 

[ebola?]

Technology requisite for replication of patterns will soon be too advanced and too widely distributed for most legal restrictions upholding intellectuality property rights to be enforced effectively.

ebola

 

[Shrooms00087]

Patterns being 'too advanced' is precisely the gap I.P.R. capitalizes on. And most things are readily and widely distributed and it is already extremely difficult to uphold them, but they still pursue it. I hate to bring up Monsanto again but it's easy, they have genetic seeds that spread by wind and they still terrorize farmers who have their plants growing (it also helps Monsanto gain leverage over seed storage).

Did you have a particular example?

 

[ebola?]

The cost of reproducing a pattern comes with the size of the set of data necessary to reproduce it, not how complicated the pattern is itself. Thus, as technology has advanced, our abilities in replicating patterns have scaled at a higher rate than our abilities to build increasingly complex patterns. Cases like Monsanto will become rarer and rarer as means to employ biotechnology become more and more widely distributed.

ebola

 

[gaktattack]

This is why chemists arent making things in their basements anymore. That and corporations restrict advancement on purpose. This is why there are industry regulations that the big boys get to decide like board licensing. I am confident through private study I can be as knowledgeable as an MD, but no one will ever honor that. Honorary PHDs for people like Bill Gates are given out when obviously due and sometimes when not, im sure he could qualify for one in business based on the success of his own.

John Stossel did an awful lot on board licensing, these gals had a shop that braided corn rows and they were shutdown because they didn't have cosmetology licenses for cutting hair. Pharmaceutical companies are evil in that they spend money on ridiculous studies to prove statistical significance above placebo. If your drug only barely beats placebo how can we be duped into buying it? Hence the antidepressant scams, and what a misnomer, isnt an antidepressant a stimulant? Based on my experience they could equally be called an antieuphoriant.

And then they ban their old drugs so that you have to buy their new ones, which is why I think darvocet went by by. Is there really need for a new opioid unless it can avoid habituation or have some other meaningful benefit?

Oh, and if you dont know the story about ulcers being curable, the scientist who discovered it was not believed untill he drank a culture and burnt a hole in his stomach. Theres no money in cures. They want you on lifelong medications.

Sorry for ranting at you guys, preaching to the choir I guess. And I agree, monsanto is devil gism burn on baals asshole.