[Australia-public-discuss] Patents article in July/August Information Age magazine

[Ben Sturmfels]

Dear ACS Information Age magazine editor,

A colleague pointed out that you reprinted an article based on a talk I
gave about software patents. Thanks for publishing this. I found a PDF
copy online.

http://acs.org.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/9309/ia201207-18.pdf

I just wanted to give some feedback though. Unfortunately the
illustration used was inappropriate for the article - a photo of a
person holding a copyright symbol. Copyright law has absolutely nothing
to do with patent law. It's a shame because this fuels the
misunderstanding about patents.

I suspect you searched for a stock photo using the phrase "intellectual
property" and found this one related to copyright.

Please don't use the term "intellectual property". The problem with the
term is that it attempts to group together various unrelated areas of
law (copyright, patent, trademark and registered design etc.),
encouraging people to make vague generalisations across all these laws.
They're just not related. The term also encourages people to think of
these laws as similar to physical property laws when they're also not.

Thanks again for the article. I'd be more that happy to write or
collaborate on any publications or speak at any events relating to
patents in the future.

Regards,
Ben

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