Thanks to Dan (and others) who helped set me straight on this. It seems I went a little overboard in accepting unquestioningly the concerns of Jeremy Rifkin and others. I really ought to know better. Nonetheless, it still strikes me as a risk that we ought not to tolerate just for the sake of stronger self-help protection against patent infringement.
On 04/03/99, Dan L. Burk <burkdanl[_at_]shu.edu> wrote:
>
> BTW, what exactly does this have to do with copyright?
Nothing. It's really a patent question. But it was posted to the copyright list, so I responded.
If a connection is needed, I suppose it does raise some interesting issues about the extent to which self-help mechanisms ought to be allowed to substitute for judicial enforcement. Is impracticality of judicial enforcement an essential part of the scheme for balancing public vs. private rights, or is it merely an inefficiency that ought not to be condoned if private methods of enforcement are more efficient? What about any externalities posed by self-help? These concerns are present in copyright as well as patent, even if the self-help mechanisms are different.
O.K, it's REALLY tenuous. I'll let the list manager police the relatedness. In any case, I think the plant genetics portion of this thread has pretty much played itself out. Thanks again.
Tyler T. Ochoa
Associate Professor
Whittier Law School
<tochoa[_at_]law.whittier.edu>
Received on Mon Apr 05 1999 - 20:00:48 GMT
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