You are wrong – if you cannot lose the attitude and the agenda in your quest to learn, I am telling you that you will not learn and I will not waste my time trying to teach you.

If you want to call the ground rules “meta-discussion”, fine. You simply are not prepared to discuss intelligently the topic at hand in the appropriate context. You will not understand what is truly useful to you and only welcome what you think is useful. Of course, you are welcome to persist in such ignorance, standing firmly with both feet in one world.

If you have any answers to the legal or technical questions I’ve asked, or any other information that might be useful to me, I’d welcome it.

“In what way is my understanding wrong?” – I cannot show you if you try to see through the software world view. You must walk before you run.

“Am I misinterpreting what he said?” – try to key on “…the software that they are using”. This encompasses more than the mere time – it encompasses the end result – the product.

“Can you point me to other material that suggests that legislators have seen the individual as equally important?” No, it is already in your grasp, but your blinders prevent you from seeing it – to use your own quote: It’s clear that it does do both” The problem comes in part from “I conclude…” when you draw your conclusions from the software perspective rather than the legal perspective. I cannot force you to understand the difference.

“Surely you can educate me” – No, this is something you need to open your own eyes and find.

“If you already have a full understanding, then technical experts have nothing to contribute to the discussion of the law. Are you saying that’s true?” – Now you are misconstruing what I said. I never said that I have full understanding or that I cannot learn from your point of view. I never have a full understanding, I can learn from your point of view and I do – What I dismiss are the factually empty LEGAL standings put forth in utter error. Been there, done that. My earlier exchanges were very enlightening to me – I do try to keep my mind open. The point, which you still fail to grasp, is that YOUR hubris and knowledge, based only in one world prevents you from your stated goals of understanding the legal view. When you started down the path of learning the technical side, did you believe that your hubris was so important? Why is it so important now?

“And I apologize that I wasn’t here in December and I can’t go back and read what you wrote then.” – I am sorry as well. I would love to have your opinion on the entire exchange, like I said, you strike me as someone very intelligent.

Noise,

You may laugh, but your quote from Jefferson is off point to a discussion of patentable subject matter – we are not discussing obviousness.

Now I get to laugh at the ever so careful breadcrumbs (sorry – inside joke).

If we’re going to quote Jefferson, let’s use one of my favorites as prominently displayed at the Patent Prospector:

“The fact is that one new idea leads to another, that to a third, and so on through a course of time until someone, with whom no one of these ideas was original, combines all together, and produces what is justly called a new invention.”
- Thomas Jefferson, Director of the 1st U.S. Patent Board –

That distinction, between the rights being the property and not the invention, makes some sense to me. However, I don’t understand in what sense it is “fully property”. Are you saying the laws that apply to all other kinds of property apply equally to intellectual property? For example, can you be charged with theft, or destruction of property, with regard to IP under the same laws that govern personal property or real estate? Or do you mean that it can be bought, sold, and inherited, like other property? Or something else?

Since I know so little about the evolution of Jefferson’s ideas, I have an honest question: can you consider a letter he wrote when he was 70 years old to be “his earlier views?” At what point did his views start to shift?

Perhaps both of you are missing some of the subtlety of Jefferson’s letter. The “property” of intellectual property is not “ideas”, nor even inventions. Rather, the property is “an exclusive right to the profits arising from them”. It is that exclusive right captured in our constitution that is the property right.

In this sense, Adam, when you speak of ideas as not property, you are technically correct, but off reference, and thus when you speak of intellectual property as not property you are incorrect. Intellectual property is property, fully so in the legal sense. Noise, while Jefferson’s stance towards patents in general did evolve over time, even his early letters supported the concept of intellectual property congruent to actual property.