Intellectual Property Rights Quotes



Stallman and others opposed copywriting of software and felt that computer programs were ideas and as such should not be able to be legally monopolized but they had to live with the law as it was. They started the open source software movement where many programmers developed software and made it freely available to the world. However, there were many companies who would take the free software which was very good, package it with their own brand and sell it. Stallman then created the copyleft concept. This meant that the open source programmers legally copyrighted the program and then created a license that anyone could have for free. But the license only gave them the right to use the software or give it freely to others. Charging money would be a copyright violation. So he and many others since used the copyright law to prevent others from interfering with or making money from distribution and Stallman named it “copyleft” meaning the other side of copyright. Thousands of major programs have been distributed this way. In some areas. It has been so successful that the free software became much more widely used than the products of Microsoft, Oracle or any of the other commercial software developers. Website development has become an example. Not only do many use it because the price is right but much of the open source free software is the best of breed. The Obama White House used a copyleft, free program for the White House website, not because they would save money—the Clinton White House had already licensed excellent commercial software. They chose the open source Drupal package because they thought it was the best available at any price.


In the early years of our nation, there was not much intellectual property being developed in America. We were an underdeveloped nation, and we took whatever we could get regardless of laws. Alexander Hamilton for example urged obtaining industrial trade secrets and even machines by whatever means was necessary. However in the latter part of the 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorns, Mark Twain and other creative Americans persuaded the government to join copyright conventions; we had become the victim of intellectual piracy rather than the pirates. Then we became the leading nation in advocating and enforcing intellectual property rights. This coincided with our becomng the leading producer of intellectual property. Intellectual property rights has always been an issue of “whose ox was gored.” The US position is somewhat hypocritical given our early history. However, respect for intellectual property rights, we now argue, in our modern global economy will encourage businesses to not only invest in developing countries but allow their technology and trade secrets to be used in the developing nation.


This principle justified the Government in allowing a local Indonesian company to manufacture anti-AIDS drugs without paying licensing rates demanded by the drug companies that held the patents. The principle is that patent rights and the desire to profit should not supersede the rights of people to continue to live because they cannot afford the drugs to keep them alive. The local manufacturers provide the drugs to the government at cost of manufacture which is a tiny proportion of the price the patent owner charges.


It not until July 5, 1727 that another imperial decree was issued Ibrahim Muteferrika establishing the first Turkish printing press.