Path: csiph.com!news.mixmin.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Lynn Wheeler Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: The joy of Patents Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2024 15:40:38 -1000 Organization: Wheeler&Wheeler Lines: 99 Message-ID: <87plnra961.fsf@localhost> References: <644516764.751141153.105442.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org> <652c95b8-cdfb-50ba-9632-e7cbeec5bf43@example.net> <8e3c519b-770e-e8e9-0d46-155863cf9e05@example.net> <87jzdz65wa.fsf@localhost> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2024 03:40:45 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="9246425cab54b51e683077b0d94c8206"; logging-data="1826755"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/o+npeP/ujZprGN+MqpULZwh8BMD0a01o=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Cancel-Lock: sha1:g3lGspoVtTVCREX3SxQzVOnT0bc= sha1:D/5K5fdM2qTPn/aGHhI5RgbqPvs= Xref: csiph.com alt.folklore.computers:228052 comp.os.linux.misc:59833 Lawrence D'Oliveiro writes: > The original concept was called “letters patent”. These were Government- > granted monopolies in particular industries (e.g. salt extraction from > seawater, or the manufacturer of gold leaf); if anybody else tried to set > up in competition with you, the legitimate monopoly holder, the Government > would send its goons round to give them a hiding. > > When it became clear the system was outdated, instead of getting rid of it > completely, the idea was changed so that you needed to come up with some > kind of “invention” to get a “patent”, which gave you a monopoly on the > rights to that “invention”. > > Though oddly, the concept of “invention” needs to be narrowly defined. For > example, Einstein couldn’t get a patent on his groundbreaking General > Theory of Relativity, but microchips exploiting General Relativity to > accurately determine your position in space and time can indeed be > patented. Was the underlying enabling theory too “inventive” to be > patented, perhaps? False Profits: Reviving the Corporation's Public Purpose https://www.uclalawreview.org/false-profits-reviving-the-corporations-public-purpose/ I Origins of the Corporation. Although the corporate structure dates back as far as the Greek and Roman Empires, characteristics of the modern corporation began to appear in England in the mid-thirteenth century.[4] "Merchant guilds" were loose organizations of merchants "governed through a council somewhat akin to a board of directors," and organized to "achieve a common purpose"[5] that was public in nature. Indeed, merchant guilds registered with the state and were approved only if they were "serving national purposes."[6] ... snip ... ... however there has been significant pressure to give corporate charters to entities operating in self-interest ... followed by extending constitutional "people" rights to corporations. The supreme court was scammed into extending 14th amendment rights to corporations (with faux claims that was what the original authors had intended). https://www.amazon.com/We-Corporations-American-Businesses-Rights-ebook/dp/B01M64LRDJ/ pgxiv/loc74-78: Between 1868, when the amendment was ratified, and 1912, when a scholar set out to identify every Fourteenth Amendment case heard by the Supreme Court, the justices decided 28 cases dealing with the rights of African Americans--and an astonishing 312 cases dealing with the rights of corporations. The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future https://www.amazon.com/Price-Inequality-Divided-Society-Endangers-ebook/dp/B007MKCQ30/ pg35/loc1169-73: In business school we teach students how to recognize, and create, barriers to competition -- including barriers to entry -- that help ensure that profits won't be eroded. Indeed, as we shall shortly see, some of the most important innovations in business in the last three decades have centered not on making the economy more efficient but on how better to ensure monopoly power or how better to circumvent government regulations intended to align social returns and private rewards How Economists Turned Corporations into Predators https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/10/economists-turned-corporations-predators.html Since the 1980s, business schools have touted "agency theory," a controversial set of ideas meant to explain how corporations best operate. Proponents say that you run a business with the goal of channeling money to shareholders instead of, say, creating great products or making any efforts at socially responsible actions such as taking account of climate change. A Short History Of Corporations https://newint.org/features/2002/07/05/history After Independence, American corporations, like the British companies before them, were chartered to perform specific public functions - digging canals, building bridges. Their charters lasted between 10 and 40 years, often requiring the termination of the corporation on completion of a specific task, setting limits on commercial interests and prohibiting any corporate participation in the political process. ... a residual of that is current law that can't use funds/payments from government contracts for lobbying. After the turn of the century there was huge upswing in private equity buying up beltway bandits and government contractors, PE owners then transfer every cent possible to their own pockets, which can be used to hire prominent politicians that can lobby congress (including "contributions") to give contracts to their owned companies (resulting in huge increase in gov. outsourcing to private companies) ... can snowball since gov. agencies aren't allowed to lobby (contributing to claims that congress is most corrupt institution on earth) http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/10/barbarians-capitol-private-equity-public-enemy/ "Lou Gerstner, former ceo of ibm, now heads the Carlyle Group, a Washington-based global private equity firm whose 2006 revenues of $87 billion were just a few billion below ibm's. Carlyle has boasted George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and former Secretary of State James Baker III on its employee roster." ... also promoting the "Success of Failure" culture (especially in the military/intelligence-industrial complex) http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/ -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970