Friday, June 08, 2007

Proposal: Patent Nonsense

Passes 5-3—Clucky

Adminned at 10 Jun 2007 09:04:32 UTC

Add a new Rule, “Patents”:-

Any Corporation may patent a phrase of four or more words, by posting a blog entry to this effect, and adding it to the “Patented Phrases” page of the BlogNomic wiki. A Corporation may only have a single phrase patented at any one time, and may release its own phrases back into the public domain, at any time, again by posting to the blog and updating the wiki. (If a Corporation has too many phrases patented, any Corporation may release that Corporation’s phrases back into the public domain until it no longer exceeds its limit.)

If any other Corporation uses a patented phrase in a blog entry, blog comment or GNDT comment, the patent holder may (within 24 hours of the phrase being used) deduct M$1 from the infringer and add it to their own cash, to a maximum of M$1 per instance of the phrase. If the infringer has no money, no cash is gained or lost.

If “Call Out The Robots” passed, replace “A Corporation may only have a single phrase patented at any one time” with “A Corporation may only have as many phrases patented as it has Offices”.

posted by Kevan at 08 Jun 2007 15:50:00 UTC Comments (11)

Comments

ChronosPhaenon:

08-06-2007 16:24:34 UTC

imperial

Rodney:

08-06-2007 17:04:32 UTC

for

Chivalrybean:

08-06-2007 18:47:10 UTC

for

Gazanga:

08-06-2007 18:59:08 UTC

for

BobTHJ:

08-06-2007 22:43:27 UTC

for

Bucky:

09-06-2007 02:29:44 UTC

against .  I just don’t think this is related to the theme.

Clucky: he/him

09-06-2007 13:23:21 UTC

against

I like the idea, but there needs to be restrictions. You should not be about to patent the name of a rule, because then no one could refer to that rule. There are ways to get around a patented “E has achieved victory” but getting around the name of a rule is almost impossible.

Kevan: he/him

09-06-2007 21:24:27 UTC

Rules can also be referred to by their numbers, or by their first few words. (And at the time of writing, there aren’t any rule names with four or more words.)

Clucky: he/him

09-06-2007 22:37:21 UTC

Um, a few dynasties ago I think we removed the “referred to by numbers” to prevent referal to the wrong rule. (Like, you say rule 2.3 but then rule 2.3 becomes another rule and now you have a headache… or at least thats the reasoning I was given)

Kevan: he/him

09-06-2007 22:57:41 UTC

I hadn’t even realised it was in the ruleset, but the “rules may be referred to by their type and entire number or type and name” in Rule 1.1 is just a toothless, ignorable “may”.

There could always be an exception for patenting the names of rules, if you felt we needed one, anyway.

Clucky: he/him

10-06-2007 02:16:59 UTC

Right. So it is work-a-round-able.

But the fact remains, its Bucky’s dynasty and e voted against it. So i’ll keep my vote.