From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/4899 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: David Spivak Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: patenting colimits? Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 19:53:32 -0700 Message-ID: Reply-To: David Spivak NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1243435665 16697 80.91.229.12 (27 May 2009 14:47:45 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 14:47:45 +0000 (UTC) To: categories@mta.ca Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Wed May 27 16:47:41 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from mailserv.mta.ca ([138.73.1.1]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1M9KPr-0004fH-Rt for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Wed, 27 May 2009 16:47:40 +0200 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1M9Jev-0004Rc-Si for categories-list@mta.ca; Wed, 27 May 2009 10:59:09 -0300 Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:4899 Archived-At: One reason a mathematician may want to patent a practical use of his idea is because if he doesn't do so, someone else can. If some corporation spent the money to understand a mathematical construction and then patented its application, not only does that corporation stand to make a lot of money (on a construction the corporation was hardly involved with), it can also keep competitors from using the ideas. Or, the corporation can "bury it," by patenting the ideas and then not using them, but still using litigation to prevent others from putting the ideas to good use. Once you patent, you control the rights to the intellectual property, and can make the product more or less widely available. To me, the patenting of an application of category theory is not an issue; the problem would be if someone patented such an application of category theory and then restricted its use or attempted to make undue amounts of money from it. [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]