Intellectual Property?

I do have some more rambling to do on charity, and it looks like it's a pressing topic as I may have a voluntary/forced community service project next week, but for now I need to get this patent stuff off my chest.

Up until recently I never thought about patents much. I mean sure there's the old quote, "I think everything has already been invented" or some such, and certainly I knew about patents from the point of view of say, the telephone. But I never looked into patents in the here and now and I never really thought about the concepts behind patents. Working where I work, and keeping in touch with the computer industry has forced me into thinking about the concepts. With Napster and copyright, and Linux and patents, it's hard to find an interesting, or at least unbiased, discussion about intellectual property. A few days ago I included the two best finds on deeper thinking in the area.

First things first, there are some whacked out things that have been patented. I mean 1-Click? Come on. I think everyone "invents" that whenever they tire of filing out a form on the web and think, gee couldn't this be easier. And some other patents out there seem to be just too broad. If I come up with an interesting way to sort numbers, can I really patent the idea of sorting numbers? So I think it's easy to say the patent office has a little work to do, ok A LOT.

Once I started thinking about the concepts behind patents, what I really started to wonder was can you really own an idea? And really let me say this here and now, read those other links for a much better discussion on this topic. Let's say Tom has this idea in his head about electricity, he discovers electricity. Then he puts his engineering skills to good use and builds a generator. So first, the idea in his head about electricity I think he owns. Thoughts in your head, you own. That part just seems logical, but does he own the idea of electricity? Certainly he discovered it but I mean its just physics. You can't own a physics concept can you? Now the generator, that's different story. I mean he thought long and hard on that one, and used engineering for goodness sake, he's gotta own that idea.

But wait a moment, what if Bob across the street just came up with the idea for a generator all on his own. Who owns the idea for a generator? Is it really the guy who fills out the right forms, gets an attorney and gets it accepted by a government agency first? Does the other guy really just get screwed? It would seem that they could both sell generators if they wanted and people would just buy the better generator so it's all good economics wise. Property ownership wise I think we are ok as well. I mean Bob didn't steal Tom's generator so no property rights were violated.

Now what if Joe buys a hand made Tom generator, takes it apart, figures out how to build one, and sells his own. Is Joe in the wrong? Did he steal an idea? Maybe his taking it apart and figuring it out is enough to say he got the idea on his own? Why do I feel the need to keep using questions?

There does seem to be the problem of high R&D budgets. Would a pharmaceutical company really invest millions in developing a cancer drug if they had to compete with any other drug maker once they came up with the drug? Certainly consumers would benefit from competition, but if the company never develops the product in the first place it doesn't really matter.

While I like examples to see how things would play out and to gauge how I think about things, its really the concepts that make up my mind. So can you own an idea, an invention? Certainly you put time an effort into it, labor, and it would seem you should somehow own the fruits of your labor. That concept works perfectly fine for a physical object, such as a chair, but does it work for an idea, an intangible?

It would seem this affects copyright as well though I haven't really thought that far. I am just sitting here thinking, if you can't own an idea, copyright and patents make no sense and have to go. But then reaching that conclusion I feel something must be wrong if that statement is true. Anyone? Anyone?