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December 21, 2004
Intellectual property, part VIII
We did try again today. I filled out two forms on our Invention Disclosure Tool. We'll see in a couple of months whether this is better than the lottery.
Ludo was upset with me for filing without asking around to make sure I got all the potential inventors names on the applications. He's right about that. We should look around more carefully, so next time I will. We don't appear to have appropriated anyone's ideas unfairly. He seemed quite irritated with me, though. Of course, even if we had taken credit for something somebody else might have thought earlier -- and I don't think we did -- we were only doing on a tiny scale exactly what our employer is doing to us by contract on a huge scale day in and day out. The entire system of intellectual property is based on some people appropriating what essentially could not realistically exist except in common. But two wrongs don't make a right.
I cannot put my finger on what was bothering him. The thing is, Ludo usually has good reasons for what he thinks, even if you don't understand right away. So I'm likely to be missing something important.
Posted by Mark at December 21, 2004 09:11 PM