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"Fashion and food were traditionally not protected by patents because to make a cake or a dress, one only needed an oven or a sowing machine. " Is that really
by sandipagr 16y ago
"Fashion and food were traditionally not protected by patents because to make a cake or a dress, one only needed an oven or a sowing machine. "
Is that really true? I don't know I am just asking. I personally don't think capital investment should have anything to do with the patent. It's like giving no value to the innovative technologies made by people in garage. Just doesn't make sense to me.
On a side note, do you consider time as capital investment?
- metamemetics 16y ago>Is that really true? Yes. Or more precisely because clothes and food are too "utilitarian". "Lessons from fashion's free culture" http://ca.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html http://ca.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion... "Copyright law's grip on film, music and software barely touches the fashion industry ... and fashion benefits in both innovation and sales, says Johanna Blakley."
- sandipagr 16y agothanks for the link. That was very interesting. It's really amazing how the entire fashion industry even without any sort of protection is running well.
- mhd 16y agoWhile the fashions themselves aren't protected, the names of the labels etc. are trademarked. That's why you're seeing the Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana names on everything. And the Luis Vuitton luggage pattern contains their logo. A lot of stuff produced is basically nothing but a vehicle for the logo itself, without much fashion/innovation around it.
- metamemetics 16y agoTrue. However analogously software companies also have trade-secret protection from employees divulging source code independent of the software patent process.
- nickpinkston 16y agoSo then music, software, books, etc. - all requiring low capital, should be in the same realm of fashion - right? If you don't believe that's true: please compare capital of an industrial bakery to a software company of the same revenue/profit.
- astrodust 16y agoThe important distinction between fashion and software is that clothing is useless unless properly manufactured. The materials and manufacturing process are an integral part of the final product. To duplicate a garment is to reverse engineer it, source the materials, and then remarket it as a knock-off, or as some imitation item under another brand. Fashion doesn't need strict copyright enforcement because by the time you've reverse engineered something and put it into production, it's already wildly out of date. You can see how Apple applies this principle to their main products, aggressively innovating so that by the time their products are copied, which is inevitable, they have already obsoleted them. Software can be duplicated at effectively zero cost to produce an identical copy. It also has a much longer lifespan for mature packages (Office, XP, etc.), where people will use the same software, plus or minus patches, for five years or more. There needs to be some kind of reasonable limitation on what people are able to do with software that they purchase, so at the very least a form of copyright is required, not unlike protections offered to books. The real thorn is that software patents are mostly preposterous, with very few requiring actual innovation to produce. It's like trying to patent a plot twist or a character quirk and then suing all authors that use it.
- metamemetics 16y agoCopywright != patent copyright protects the expression of an idea, while a patent protects the idea itself