The first case of the pot calling the kettle black this new year: Jason Freed blogs about Trademark hysteria and how trademarks are being misused by companies these days for the silliest reasons.
I wish he could apply the same critical thinking skills to 37signals own sad case of "Copyright hysteria" that I've quite vocally blogged about in the past.
Just because you can slap a "Copyright (c) 37signals, LLC" sticker on everything you touch (whether it's legally copyrightable or not) does not mean you should.
here's a related link: http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/36/MAGDO.html it's for fashion design piracy but I think the same line of thinking (and the problems that beset it) also applies.
Posted by: pageman | January 02, 2009 at 11:40 PM
Hi,
I'm not a lawyer, but I am a computer ethicist. One of the things you might have missed in your investigation of copyright - it only extends to actual copies, not to the ideas behind it. If someone who'd never read "Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone" created it from scratch word-for-word, he would own the copyright to it, just as J.K owns the copyright to hers.
Of course, proving that would be another matter entirely.
The same, notably, does not hold true for patents.
Posted by: thomblake | February 19, 2009 at 11:41 AM