No ones knows who invented the wheel...but we always try not to re-invent it!
Somebody in ancient China was clever enough to invent the printing machine while another discovered the formula for gun powder. But they didn't file any patent for that!.
Some brilliant mathematician in India came up with the idea of using zero and built the foundation of mathematics; yet s/he fell short of protecting its intellectual rights!
Yet there are billion dollar law suits being fought all over the world over "a rounded cornered rectangle" or a tiny-winy change in the chemical composition of a life saving drug.
Sometimes these corporate houses win and sometime they lose. But what I abhor is the very idea of hogging and hiding the knowledge and related benefits.
It's not for the benefit of the inventors as these big companies often claim. If anything, it protects the interest of lawyers and shareholders in expensive suits, rather than the actual "inventors" who often work in their R-n-D labs for a modest salary.
Knowledge is for sharing, not for hiding. But today's immensely complicated patent laws and fierce corporate battles for minuscule "inventions" seem to differ.
How the world would look like if the real important theories and inventions were well hidden? If Ohms law and Lenze's law could be "patented" to be used by a privileged few? Or the method of Pasteurization, the penicillin, the semiconductor? I could go on for ever with this list....
Most actual scientists and inventors don't like or want such hedging of knowledge. Evidence is Wikipedia, Linux, Java and the numerous other open source projects!
With all their money and PR power, these big corporate houses have successfully created an atmosphere where the common people think that the intellectual property right is a fundamental right. It nurtures a culture of so-called healthy competition which would, according to many today, enhance intellectual capabilities of human race.
Even if we discard the fact that these competitions are never healthy and are always heavily rigged in favor of big players in the field; this whole philosophy is wrong. It's collaboration, not competition which made today's human civilization the way we know it.
As the raspberry pie founder Eben Upton pointed out so rightly, we've become alienated from the technology in last 20 years. There are ever more users but so fewer innovators in technology.
And all these patent laws, legal complexities and ban on sharing and collaborating in the name of protecting the IP rights, deter the very spirit of innovation.
Instead, all the focus is on branding, packaging and doing mild tweaks to create another business channel selling to those ever increasing tech users.
This might very well suit the big corporate houses and their pet lawyers, but as the only intelligent species of this planet, we've a thing to worry!
