ove). This is true sometimes, however, to copy a book would take time. You would have to type up each page to make a copy of it, or at least photocopy or scan each page, and it would most likely take up much more time than its worth. To copy a computer program however, takes seconds. Changing the law would take time and money, you might be saying. It would be a tremendous hassle in Congress to have a new law written just to cover that "Information Superhighway" thingy. Yes, that's true too, but to not change the laws will cost more. With the ability to patent new and non-obvious software functions comes serious problems. The latest new technology, be it ray-tracing 3D engines, anti-aliasing software, or a new internet exploring fad can be patented. This would mean that only one company and its software could use it. Any other companies that wanted to use the software would have to pay them a large sum of money for the rights. Also, since patent hearings are conducted over a period of 3 years, and in secrecy, company 'a' might create a software package and then apply for a patent, and company 'b' may create better software during that period, and might become quite sucessful, and then bam, the patent is given to the company 'a', who prompty sues the pants off company 'b'. This stagnates the computer industry; it used to be that company 'a' would retaliate by making better software (Del Guercio 22-24). For example, Lotus software. They used to make data organization software. Up until I did this report, I thought they had gone out of business, because I hadn't heard about anything new being done by them. Well, while I was researching, I found the appalling truth. When patenting of software became acceptable in the early 90's, they closed up their R&D departments and called in a bunch of lawyers to get them patents on all their programming techniques (Del Guercio 22-24). Ever since then, they've been selling out the rights as their primari...
