s is true sometimes,however, to copy a book would take time. You would have to type u!p each page to make a copy of it, or at least photocopy or scan each page, and it would most likely takeup 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 hasslein Congress to have a new law written just to cover that "Information Superhighway" thingy. Yes, thatstrue too, but to not change the laws will cost more. With the ability to patent new and non-obvioussoftware 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 onecompany and its software could use it. Any other companies that wanted to use the software would have topay them a large sum of money for the rights. Also, since patent hearings are conducted over a period of3 years, and in secrecy, company 'a' might create a software package and then apply for a patent, andcompany 'b' may create better software during that period, and might become quite sucessful, and thenbam, 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' wouldretaliate by making better software (Del Guercio 22-24). For example, Lotus software. They used to make data organization software. Up until I did thisreport, I thought they had gone out of business, because I hadn't heard about anything new being done bythem. Well, while I was researching, I found the appalling truth. When patenting of software becameacceptable in the early 90's, they closed up their R&D departments and called in a bunch of lawyers toget them patents on all their programming techniques (Del Guercio 22-24). Ever since then, they've beenselling out the rights as their primarily (and I'...
