The timeline problem: Copyright/patent law says: You wrote it at time T Therefore from T to T+70years, you control it Anyone who writes the same thing at T+

The timeline problem: Copyright/patent law says: You wrote it at time T Therefore from T to T+70years, you control it Anyone who writes the same thing at T+1 is "copying" But if we both arrive at the same solution independently, causality matters more than chronology. If your code didn't cause mine, why should your timestamp give you power over me? This breaks the whole edifice: If independent discovery isn't "theft," then copyright only makes sense for literal verbatim copying. And even then - if I retype your code character-by-character because it's the best solution, am I stealing or just recognizing truth?