IP law: undemocratic, totalitarian, and unethical
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 30th Jun 2012 19:34 UTC
Legal Yesterday, we were treated to another preliminary injunction on a product due to patent trolling. Over the past few years, some companies have resorted to patent trolling instead of competing on merit, using frivolous and obvious software and design patents to block competitors - even though this obviously shouldn't be legal. The fact that this is, in fact, legal, is baffling, and up until a few months ago, a regular topic here on OSNews. At some point - I stopped reporting on the matter. The reason for this is simple: I realised that intellectual property law exists outside of regular democratic processes and is, in fact, wholly and utterly totalitarian. What's the point in reporting on something we can't change via legal means?
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EU
by ndrw on Sun 1st Jul 2012 04:16 UTC
ndrw
Member since:
2009-06-30

It's not like TRIPS has some sort of absolute power. Maybe if you're living in a small developing country, then, yes, you may have no choice.

But for the EU, it was a conscious decision to follow these regulations, and indeed, to participate in their creation. Should they decide otherwise, TRIPS would be dead already, as WTO would have never allow EU to leave. My point is, if you're a European, you can't claim the process was undemocratic.

Frankly speaking, I don't think these treaties matter anymore. We will likely see them collapsing as the world-wide economic situation deteriorates. As always, it will happen for all wrong reasons (like leaving WTO in order to block the import) but nevertheless days of trade treaties are counted.

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