Patents offer valuable property protection??
Patents offer valuable property protection??
2008-08-13T17:33:54
Patents are not necessary for innovation, writes Venkatesh Hariharan in the Financial Express. But they offer valuable property protection, says Saikrishna Rajagopal - who, by the way, happens to be (as mentioned at the end of the article) a lawyer! There is a very fundamental misunderstanding regarding of the nature of "innovation" which has been unfortunately propagated by school-book stories of scientists like Newton getting the "idea" of gravitation all of a sudden when he saw an apple falling down - there are definitely such "aha" moments in science when an idea suddenly "clicks" - but these "aha" moments were preceded by years of painstaking work during which the scientist worked hard to build upon the ideas of those who came before him - mixing and matching and extending and enhancing them by his own insights. So, when our lawyer friend says: While large Indian IT companies are now able to compete globally, there are a number of small and medium enterprises in the IT sector that need a level playing field. Patenting their innovations will give these companies an even chance to compete with larger corporations since their IP will be adequately protected and can be leveraged for its economic value. we can ask him this question - how are these "small and medium enterprises" going to innovate? By generating absolutely original "ideas" which do not touch upon any of the already existing "patented" ideas? If this does not make the stupidity of the whole venture clear, nothing will!
Dinil
Fri Aug 15 16:17:52 2008
Seems like the lawyer has `some' information on why patents were introduced; but absolutely no clue of how they work now!