Re: Re: Attribution is not required in public domain materials

Sterling writes:
>In my opinion its the idea, not its first tangible expression, which
>should be protected by copyright. The unrecoverable uniqueness is to
>be found in the idea.

Except for the fact that all copyright treaties explicitly ban copyright protection for ideas.

Bodi writes:
>Thus, to be patentable, it must be a useful "process, machine,
>manufacture, or composition of matter" or an "improvement" thereof.
> An "idea" is much more general, and must fall into this list to be
>patentable.

Such very general "ideas" would also violate explicit bans in copyright laws against copyright for ideas. And in the commercial world, most new "ideas" are not that general, but when categorize easily fall into one of the categories of process, machine, manufacture, improvement. For example, at the end of each year, the New York Times has been publishing in its Sunday magazine a list of new "ideas". The vast majority of them are easily decidable withing the patent system - the Robovac, the scramjet, the self-cleaning dinner table, the remote controlled rat, umbilicoplasty, traceable bullets, spoofing, smart garage, vision chip, net metering, etc.

There is absolutely no place for idea protection in copyright law.

Greg Aharonian Received on Thu Jun 19 2003 - 21:07:45 GMT