Aug 10, 2007 1:59:46 PM cite

isn't that a dangerous point of view? for shure it is neccessary to protect, let me say the idea, especially for all kinds of arts. rather more it's about who can own these so called patents. and isn't it the problem that imaginary persons, so called companies can own these patents. and we have to carefully look about the borders between what is patentable and what's not. for me it makes no sense the a company can own patents on genes or plants.

by maybeman

Sep 29, 2006 10:31:04 PM cite

n the short patents are important to creativity,if you created it you want protection for your idea. Control of your idea. Unfortunately patents are not all they appear for they in practice only protect the rich who can buy multiple patents. If you are a single person with an idea and you dutifully patent it ,a large company can decide to use what you have done with out paying you and just pay the fine. Patents should protect fully. If you know an idea you have will be protected that encourages more creativity from that individual. The Patent System needs an over hall but it is a keeper. "Just tossing my Opinion in the Opinion Pool" ~A~

by Imperfect Vessel

Sep 11, 2006 4:35:51 AM cite

The problem is not the Patent Laws, but the high cost of obtaining the Patent, that limits it to large corporations. The individual tinkerer does not have the recources.

by thedoc

Sep 9, 2006 4:50:00 PM cite

Antoschka - Ekaterina Moshaeva: Because every thing has two sides, you know. Of course, there is a good thing in Dropping Knowledge organisation, it has one symbol " copyleft" not "copyright" but "copyleft". Every person can use this, you know. Sometimes It's very funny because I have heard that there is a patent on song "Happy Birthday" and you must pay in order to sing this song. It's stupid and overdone. You cannot patent every word ot every thing. Some people misapply this. This is also clownery. Because people when they tackle a problem they always overact and overplay. You cannot patent every word and not all existing patents are useful to people. Certainly, when scientists, painters or poets create something new, they make much efforts but at the same time these people must waste their time on patenting although they could create some new ideas, pictures or poems. This is another question. Today, in the Internet Age, you can put every idea on the Internet so that people can see and get your message. For example, I founded such organisation as the “World Parliament of the Clowns” which gives us, clowns, immunity.

by Antoschka - Ekaterina Moshaeva

Sep 9, 2006 4:50:00 PM cite

Abbas Beydoun: Actually it is not easy for the people who are living in the 3rd world to pay the translation costs or the costs of the author rights and the economists there are not able to afford the costs of patent laws, so I think it is not bad thing at all and it is not illegal to allow these people to publish, translate and reproduce the technology without author rights or patent laws. I assume that we need that because with author rights or patent laws we will not achieve innovation.

by Abbas Beydoun

Sep 9, 2006 4:50:00 PM cite

Alvaro Restrepo:

by Alvaro Restrepo

Sep 9, 2006 4:50:00 PM cite

Ana Lucy Bengochea: It´s very important that these patent laws in the whole world, as I mentioned before, that the companies in one country always manage what has to do with patents and that they gather information from the communities and patentize this information, especially when these communities possess medical plants which people had been protecting and which had been used to cure various diseases. Therefore the behaviour of the companies, the sudden patentisation, is not loyal. It is very important that the communities can patentize their knowledge, the plants and science of their ancestors.

by Ana Lucy Bengochea

Sep 9, 2006 4:50:00 PM cite

Andries Botha: Well I guess the answer to that is, if you dumped all the patent laws, people couldn’t make money out of it. And because they can’t make money out of it, they wouldn’t finance the research. And they’re very few – it seems to me that there is, regrettably, an unstoppable relationship between remuneration – personal remuneration- and research. Research has to be paid for. And, if there’s not going to be a profit attached to it, I don’t think we’re going to get the large-scale development around research in order to make that profit. However, what is more important, is that we consider how in fact – once, you know what is considered to be an equitable return on your profit investment, especially if the research is about – about ownership of property that effects the health and well-being of people. For example, it’s completely unacceptable that the anti-retrovirals for instance, that are available through our technologies could change the very lives and fabrics of people suffering from HIV and AIDS, and yet, the majority of people in the world that are suffering from this diseases cannot afford to have access to the drugs that can sustain their lives, because they’re just not affordable. And, on the one hand, the people are entitled to recoup their inputs, and on the other hand it becomes completely unacceptable that those resources are not available to improve our humanity because they just simply are not affordable. So, we can’t dump patent laws but we have to develop a different [inaudible]

by Andries Botha

Sep 9, 2006 4:50:00 PM cite

Angaangaq Lyberth: Answertext will be available soon.

by Angaangaq Lyberth

Sep 9, 2006 4:50:00 PM cite

Anthony Arnove: The reason that patent laws aren’t being dumped is that there are people who have economic interests in preserving patent law, there’s people who have an economic interest in what’s called intellectual property. There’s tremendous profit and growing profit today in the intellectual property industries. So, if you are in such an industry, you have every interest in limiting competition, limiting creative use, limiting the free interplay of ideas as a means of protecting your monopoly, protecting you profits. And so, we – and this question raises the question of who has an interest in preserving patent laws and who has an interest in ending such patent laws. Take for example the pharmaceutical industry. In the pharmaceutical industry, we see repeatedly how patent law is used to prevent development of information that would allow drugs to be distributed in a way that was more accessible, that would greater address the problems of a particular disease, the disease they prevent in the third world, disease associated with third-world poverty and inequality, all that diseases that are now increasingly spreading to the third world within the first world. And on the other hand, you have companies – pharmaceutical companies that profit from those patent laws. So, you need to begin -- I think to start a process of challenging the power of those companies to limit access to information, to limit the sharing of information, to limit our access to that information, which is holding back scientific progress, holding back human progress, and also in the [realm of ours] holding back all kinds of economic, all kinds of economic [audio ends].

by Anthony Arnove

Sep 9, 2006 4:50:00 PM cite

Anuradha Koirala: That's for sure [inaudible] understanding if you dump all the patent law it would allow creativity and innovation [inaudible].

by Anuradha Koirala

Sep 9, 2006 4:50:00 PM cite

Anuradha Mittal: Well, I don’t think that’s true that we need to have patent laws if you are going to have creativity or innovation. That’s a total myth. If you go back and look at the history of innovation, the amazing contributions that have been made in this world, they weren’t just all driven by profits or intellectual property rights. People were driven to make these contributions because they wanted to contribute to society; they wanted to contribute to the betterment of humanity. It is a lie again that has been fed to us that till we have intellectual property rights, till individuals or corporations can trademark or copyright things, we will not make any innovation. That’s a myth. As human beings, it is our nature to be curious; it is our nature to contribute. And what has happened is that these myths have basically taken away our ability and our desire to do that. So, in fact, I believe it is time to dump all intellectual property rights. It is time to say that there can be no patents on seeds, for example. Look at the contribution farmers have made. Over centuries, over different generations, farmers have been working in the fields making those contributions and passing it out. We now think that all innovations in agriculture took place in basically by people in white coats in labs. That’s not true. That innovation, as far as agriculture is concerned, has taken place on the fields, not because people are looking for intellectual property rights. They were looking for increasing production so the communities, humanity could be fed. So, I am against intellectual property rights, and I would say if you really want innovation, if you really want growth, if you really want betterment of humanity, it is time to share.

by Anuradha Mittal

Sep 9, 2006 4:50:00 PM cite

Ashok Gangadean: I want to take issue with this question in a way. I understand the point about patent laws but there is a sense and which is more complicated. I mean, obviously the patent laws...we can encourage creativity and incentive in the marketplace to invest enormous time and energy and resources to invent and break new frontiers. So, I can understand the importance of protecting the patents and rights and intellectual property for example, and creative properties of the entrepreneurs and inventors and the innovators. But on the other side of this question I understand the intent that patents can be stifling of open flow and creativity of sharing. There is a spirit in which human beings sharing their discoveries not as their private ego base, but as gifts that they bring through from a higher source that belongs to all the people and not to be taking personal credits for it. So that patent laws are part of kind of economic structure, an egocentric structure, that possesses, that it’s my property and my invention and my breakthrough. Rather than seeing that we are vessels that brings through the creative and inventive innovations from a higher source. So its part of a shift in a whole cultural milleau and consciousness to enter into an integral consciousness of connectivity and which has open sharing and exchange in a humane marketplace of equals. No patents laws are really required and I wish the world were that way. I would love to share all of my ideas openly, and take no credit for them. And just give in a pro bono way, my services to humanity and may we all live in that way.

by Ashok Gangadean

Sep 9, 2006 4:50:00 PM cite

Audrey Kitagawa: This depends on which side of the fence you're on, because some people may argue that these patent laws are designed to help promote creativity and innovation, because if you have spent years trying to develop your invention, that you would want to be able to have some reward for the creativity that you have provided in your invention and in your innovation that ultimately will benefit many people. So laws are designed to help promote creativity and innovation, and the people who have designed these inventions, and so if you are in the shoes of the inventor, of the creator of your invention, then the question becomes would you want to have, avail yourself of those laws and regulations that would protect your proprietary interest in your invention. On the other hand, you are addressing this question as a way of seeing it as restraining creativity and innovation. So I think you have to be able to step into the shoes of the inventor and the creator of the innovation and to see how you feel with having laws in place to protect your invention, and then see how this question would sound as you're standing in those shoes. And I think it's important to be able to step into the shoes of the other, in the formulation of not only this but other questions as well. So we can see how our questions are framed with a particular bias or interest.

by Audrey Kitagawa

Sep 9, 2006 4:50:00 PM cite

Avi Primor: Your question could refer to all areas of life. Why have rules, why have laws? Why restrain people? Let people do what they want. Let a car move in the city disregarding red traffic lights. Why not? Everyone should do what he wants! But yes. But if one tried to live one's life in this way, one would destroy each other - in all areas of liefe, even where one is seeking freedom, absolute freedom. We do have limits, we must have limits, and the limits are limits of freedom that starts consztraining the freedom of others. And it is the same thing with technology development. One must know how to progress without destroying the others, without limiting the others, without constraining the creativity of the others. You cannot do everything, you cannot do what you want. We are a whole, we are part of a whole, we do not live alone in the world. And if we want to live in a country, in particular, if we want to progress, we must live in a co-ordinated manner, and co-ordination among humans requires rules.

by Avi Primor

Sep 9, 2006 4:50:00 PM cite

Benjamin Fahrer: There are definitely patent laws that stop creativity and innovation. And yet there are also patent laws that help protect the creativity and innovation. Someone like Paul Stamets who is doing restorative myco-restoration, that’s the restoration using the mycelium, the mushroom forces as allies to clean up toxic spills, to help clean up the superfund sites, diesel, and to help clean water doing biofiltration, off of runoff from pesticides on farms. And taking out a patent and help protect that technology from being bought, you can take the chance to sell his patent to the government or whatever and then that, technology will be locked up. But by patenting it, it is then been able to protect it from being exploited. If we got to get rid of all patent laws and be more copy left, like this is what is doing. Could be a very good thing? It might have some impacts that were not necessary so aware of. People are fearful of taking those types of step. We have to see what we have, and how can we accelerate creativity and innovation by using the patent laws? Mycelium running -- Paul Stamets, amazing pioneer in this work and this allies, up in the northwest of America.

by Benjamin Fahrer

Sep 9, 2006 4:50:00 PM cite

Benson Venegas: Dumping patent laws is not the solution to [inaudible] creativity and innovation. The answer lies in creating a more equitable system for protecting indigenous people and other resource rights. Dumping patents laws would mean individual innovators are not afford opportunity to benefit form their knowledge and creativity. Thus the lack of incentive to share it. However, current protection system [inaudible] based, [favor to ours] protecting rights of individuals, who understand and have access to information and a highly protection system, and or have the finances to take all patent protection. So what we're trying to say here is that what we need to create is a alternative patent system that also incorporate the respect of indigenous and traditional values and knowledge, and that doesn't create a situation where it allow other people to go and steal away this knowledge and make a profit or a business with this indigenous knowledge, and this is where right now the debate is taking place.

by Benson Venegas

Sep 9, 2006 4:50:00 PM cite

Bianca Jagger: Answertext will be available soon.

by Bianca Jagger