Let's imagine that in the Seventeen Hundreds
the governments of Europe had decided to promote
the progress of symphonic music,
or as they thought, promote it
With a system of musical idea patents.
Anybody who could describe
a new musical idea in words
could get a patent which would be a monopoly on that idea,
then he could sue anybody else
that implemented that idea in a piece of music.
So a rhythmic pattern could be patented,
or a sequence of chords,
or a set of instruments to use together,
or any idea you could describe
in words.
Now imagine it's 1800
and you're Beethoven
and you want to write a symphony.
You're gonna find it's harder
to write a symphony that
you won't get sued for, than write
a symphony that sounds good.
Because to write a symphony
and not get sued,
you're gonna have to tread your way around
thousands of musical idea patents
And if you complained about this,
saying it's getting in the way of your creativity,
the patent holders would say :
"Oh, Beethoven you're just jealous
because we had these ideas before you.
Why should you steal our ideas?"
More than 200,000 software patents have been granted in the U.S.
Programmers find it increasingly difficult
to write software they won't be liable to be sued for.
Now imagine...