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

[Stephen Rider]

On Oct 28, 2007, at 3:06 PM, Kristian Rink wrote:

> Joel D Canfield schrieb:
>
>> what kinds of situations are you talking about? I understand your  
>> point
>> but don't know of examples.
>
> Have a look at
>
> http://webshop.ffii.org/ ;
>
> most of the "patents" listed there are just outrageous trivial  
> (sending
> a gift to an address other than your own, entering a rebate code,  
> credit
> card payment, or the webshop itself), and yet all these are patents
> granted at least in Europe... Intellectual property? "Innovation"  
> even?
> I hardly do think so...

That site reminds me of a joking debate on an email list in the early  
90s, in which various people were declaring their copyrights on  
words.  One guy finally thought he had it licked by copyrighting the  
word "the".

...until somebody copyrighted the word "copyright".

So will somebody please just patent the patent process and end this  
silliness?

Stephen

P.S. -- Seriously, that site is pretty outrageous.  Sounds like the  
patent committee doesn't have a single tech-savvy person on it:   
"Hey, a patent on writing information as ones and zeroes?  Sure, why  
not!  I've never heard of it before!"