Re: Chapter on Open Source in Friedman's _The World is Flat_

Alexandre Oliva writes:
 > Way back then, should patents exist and the inventor of the wheel file
 > a patent on it,

The reason we have an obviousness test is that in England, somebody
patented the crank.  As you might guess, there was a huge explosion of
patenting effort wasted in finding ways to convert linear movement
into rotational.

Back in 1776, the USA was pirating foreign information technology
(patents and copyrights) routinely.  Does that sound like any
particular country today, Alexandre?  :-)

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