Patents, Trade Agreements and the Technology of Theft

Abstract

From the Author's Paper:

"(B)y the end of the twentieth century sophisticated legal devices called patents were perceived in some place as tools leading to just rewards and in other places as mechanisms for allowing acts of piracy and imposing crushing costs. One side claimed patents were protection from thieves while the other side remarked that those who demanded patent protection from thieves were once and continued to be thieves themselves.

"With such differing attitudes, the problem became how to know whose yardstick to use when deciding which is the proper spin and whose is the righteous wisdom? In the United States, the Supreme Court decision in Diamond vs. Chakrabarty might have greased the way for patenting "everything under the sun made by man" but even that decision gave the nation no guidance for acceptable behavior when meeting people for whom everything under the sun is sacred and therefore never to be considered property."