[thelist] it's intellectual, but is it property? (was RE: GNU / GPL)

[Martin Burns]

On 28 Oct 2007, at 00:25, Stephen Rider wrote:

>> It's very much the difference between me seeing some functionality
>> at a website, and figuring out how to create something like it,
>> versus copying their code and reusing it without permission. They
>> don't own the idea of 'dragging this here makes that happen' any
>> more than they own the color blue.
>
> I think Amazon.com would disagree with you there.  If you write new
> code that duplicates the relatively simple concept of a cookie that
> remembers who you are so that you can make purchases with a single
> click, it doesn't matter a whit that you haven't copied their source
> -- the methodology is what they've patented.  That is, they do in   
> fact legally own the _idea_, not the specific code.

Yeah, not so much these days:
http://igdmlgd.blogspot.com/2007/10/amazon-one-click-patent-rejected-by-us.html

...and of course that kind of thing is very much US-specific - other  
jurisdictions don't do business method patents.

Cheers
Martin

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