Bizarre and insane
Groklaw is reporting that the US Patent and Trademark Office has published a patent covering a storyline. Yes, the US apparently now holds that patents no longer apply only to machines and inventions but also to concepts as nebulous and divorced from the material world as plotlines. Existing law has, for centuries, recognised an author’s rights as enshrined in the idea of copyright – that someone who creates a novel (or play, or opera, or symphony) has the right to decide whether and how that creation is reproduced. Crucially, though, copyright applies only to the actual expression of the work. So, although it is illegal simply to copy someone else’s novel, it’s quite alright to write your own novel based on the same ideas (preferably with a few of your own added!). This is how art works – writers, artists and composers are inspired by one another to create works incorporating new ideas and the ideas of others in new and exciting ways.
But if the USA starts to grant patents on stories, this will end. Patents differ from copyright in that they control not the expression of ideas but the ideas themselves. The holder of a patent on a machine that makes boxes controls whether anyone else can make her machine – but can’t stop someone building a different machine to make boxes provided that it works in a different way. By contrast, the holder of a patent on a story can prevent anyone telling that story in any medium. We will find that the large Hollywood studios (as the ones with the money to buy such patents) will control all stories. Which means that writers will only be able to write under contract to the studios. Which means that the amount of writing will go down hugely in the USA, which means that the amount of publishing will go down hugely, which means that there will be far fewer new writers, which can only impoverish us all. Do we really want to go down this road?
pax et bonum
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