"Find a popular restaurant with an original shtick, set up a copy, and see if proper attribution changes the degree to which you've pissed off the owner of the

"Find a popular restaurant with an original shtick, set up a copy, and see if proper attribution changes the degree to which you've pissed off the owner of the original." The first thing they would do is remind everyone that they had the original recipe, that they still make it the authentic way, and that the competition cannot get it right because they are just copying things. Surely you could have come up with a better example. "The Apple versus Samsung case is a really great example. The case didn't happen because certain patents existed" Yes it did, see above. Steve Jobs wanted to ensure that it was Apple filing patent lawsuits, rather than Apple being sued. Rounded rectangles are not an original idea. Apple is a profiteering corporation, no different than any other profiteering corporation: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/patent-wars-among-tech-giants-can-stifle-competition.html?pagewanted=all https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/patent-wars-am... Here is what Steve Jobs really felt: "Privately, Mr. Jobs gathered his senior managers. While Apple had long been adept at filing patents, when it came to the new iPhone, “we’re going to patent it all,” he declared," "“Even if we knew it wouldn’t get approved, we would file the application anyway,” the former Apple lawyer said in an interview. “If nothing else, it prevents another company from trying to patent the idea.”" "Perceptions about the protection of ideas predate "all that money donated by Hollywood and the recording industry, all their lobbying, all the revolving door politics..."" Right, they can be traced all the way back to "that cozy relationship between printing press operators and the British government, with all their lobbying, and with the lack of protections on free speech." For what it's worth, the idea that sharing is good for humanity and that knowledge should be copied predates the notion of copyrights and patents by millennia: ancient libraries copied books frequently, without hesitation, and one point anyone who came to Alexandria with books was required to allow the books to be copied. Copyright was a product of industry from its very inception: first to ensure that only certain, government-approved printing presses could publish books, later to maintain the revenue stream of those presses (after intense lobbying following a period of no copyrights. "there has been a strong theme of people wanting to protect intangible property" Yes, but at one time it was considered to be the sort of thing that the aristocracy did to prevent the lower class from ever rising to power. "Usually these come up in the context of "misappropriation" or "unfair competition."" No, it usually came up as "censorship," "sedition," "libel," "witchcraft," and "heresy." The early origin of copyrights in English law falls squarely in that category: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_1662 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_166... "Another good example is analyst stock recommendations/price targets" Yes, this is a good example: these are created for the purpose of turning a profit, by people who are so focused on exploiting others that they disproportionately meet the clinical definition of a psychopath. Of course they want that information to not be copied; the fewer people who know it, the more of an edge those that do know it have over their competition.