WEBVTT

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Let's imagine that 
in the Seventeen Hundreds

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the governments of Europe 
had decided to promote

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the progress of symphonic music,

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or as they thought, promote it

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With a system of 
musical idea patents.

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Anybody who could describe

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a new musical idea in words

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could get a patent which would be 
a monopoly on that idea,

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then he could sue anybody else

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that implemented that idea 
in a piece of music.

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So a rhythmic pattern 
could be patented,

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or a sequence of chords,

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or a set of instruments 
to use together,

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or any idea you could describe

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in words.

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Now imagine it's 1800

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and you're Beethoven

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and you want 
to write a symphony.

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You're gonna find it's harder

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to write a symphony that

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you won't get sued for, 
than write

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a symphony that sounds good.

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Because to write a symphony

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and not get sued,

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you're gonna have to tread 
your way around

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thousands of 
musical idea patents

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And if you complained
about this,

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saying it's getting in
the way of your creativity,

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the patent holders would say :

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"Oh, Beethoven 
you're just jealous

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because we had 
these ideas before you.

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Why should you steal our ideas?"

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More than 200,000 software patents
have been granted in the U.S.

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Programmers find it 
increasingly difficult

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to write software they
won't be liable to be sued for.

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Now imagine...