On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 17:41:28 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan
wrote:

On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 12:10:13 -0500, John Fields
wrote:

....

but my
personal view is that if it's not my invention and I copy it in
order to keep from having to pay the inventor his just due then I
have stolen from him what he deserved to earn and am nothing more
than a common thief.

And here we may need to disagree, though I'm not interested in
debating it at length. The patent system wasn't created because of
some fundamental underlying idea that 'theft of ideas is wrong' and a
conclusion that inventors are under some attack by thieves demanding
social remedy, but instead because there is a value for the social
commons in encouraging inventors to disclose what novel things they
discover that might otherwise be lost as an art when they die.

---
Agreed, and the reward for the inventor is in the form of a monopoly
which generally prohibits the copying of the invention for the
lifetime of the patent.

I disagree slightly with your use of the word 'discovery' over
'invention', the implication being that the Venus de Milo was
already in the block of marble just waiting to be let out.
---

If the EU constructs a patent system, which is also based upon the
commons idea, but designs it somewhat differently to serve different
exacting design purposes, I see no problem with that, at all.

---
Depends.

If they design one where, say, copying for personal use is allowed
then it may well be that patented inventions imported from countries
with prohibitions against copying for personal use will be
infringed, with no relief available to the inventor.


--
JF