From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/4909 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "David Espinosa" Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: patenting colimits? Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 00:15:41 -0700 Message-ID: Reply-To: "David Espinosa" NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1243561032 17351 80.91.229.12 (29 May 2009 01:37:12 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 01:37:12 +0000 (UTC) To: "Categories" Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Fri May 29 03:37:08 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 1M9r1u-0007ow-3c for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Fri, 29 May 2009 03:37:06 +0200 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1M9qLg-000313-EN for categories-list@mta.ca; Thu, 28 May 2009 21:53:28 -0300 Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:4909 Archived-At: We seem to be more excited about patents than categories! I guess opinions are cheaper than theorems... I'd say that citation is the academic form of currency. Here's a dictionary: Academia: Academics rush to publish before their colleagues. Industry: Companies rush to patent before their competition. Academia: Academics get quite upset if you use their ideas without citing them. Industry: Companies sue you if you use their patents without paying them. Academia: A generous academic lets you publish his idea (yeah, right). Industry: A generous businessman lets you profit from his idea (yeah, right). Academia: You can publish improvements to someone's basic idea. Industry: You can patent improvements to someone's basic idea. So you can see why I find the academic "high horse" attitude towards patents a bit hypocritical. BTW, here's a difference between academia and industry, which comes about because money is more flexible than time: Academia: An academic *cannot* give you any credit for his existing publication. Industry: A company *can* let you profit from its existing patent. David [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]