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August 03, 2004
Intellectual property
The second line on my pay slip for last month says SUN041335. The number comes from Sun's invention disclosure tool, a web-based internal app for filing patents.
So why would a guy who finds intellectual property an unecessary monopoly file patent applications his employer contractually gets to keep? The answer has something to do with why he works at all: He has not yet found the gumption to follow Henry David Thoreau to Walden.
That my work contract says roughly that all my useful thoughts belong to Sun hardly bothers me. What might constitute an alternative? Should I aim to negotiate the rights to ideas occurring inside my head?
Why should I label them as my thoughts in the first place? How many useful thoughts did I have prior to learning to speak, write, interact with other folks and with my environment? None. Thoughts become useful when shared, when they spark other thoughts and actions in ourselves and in others that lead to useful events and artifacts. If we cannot separate the usefulness from the sharing, why should we designate an owner separate from the sharing?
Without intellectual property, capitalism cannot survive.
Posted by Mark at August 3, 2004 09:21 PM