gregh  2007-01-10 12:28  copyright  Law  patent   

Two posts within a small window today, addressing two different areas of IP law. First, Prof. Madison of madisonian.net suggests the MedImmune decision contained a small swipe at the haughtiness of patent lawyers:

There’s a Brahminic quality to the argument. These patent lawyers deal in “science” (as in, “I’m not a real doctor; I have a master’s degree — in science!”), and because they deal in “science,” they deal in legal arcana that are more challenging and more important than the arcana that challenge ordinary lawyers. Especially mere copyright lawyers. In more serious terms, the argument tracks the stereotype that “science” and “the humanities” are two independent and distinct forms of knowledge, and that “science” is more rigorous and therefore more important than the humanities. Patent law is the highest calling of intellectual property law because science is somehow more fundamental to social and cultural development than are other forms of knowledge.

To which the Supreme Court might be saying, in an attentuated way but in this respect (if not necessarily doctrinally, in MedImmune) rightly so, “phooey.” (The Church Lady uses refined language, after all.) In the sense that we all know the world via forms drawn from the sciences and the humanities both, we are all, with Judge Rader, “patent lawyers.”

Meanwhile, William Patry of Google, announcing the release of his copyright treatise, wrote the following about some of his goals while writing the treatise:

One reason the book took as long as it did and is as big as it is, was my desire to break out of the specialist's blinders which I had voluntarily donned to my detriment for too many years. For too many years, I believed that copyright law was special, the Cinderella of the law, as some referred to it.

So, bringing these two posts together, Copyright is beautiful, but too few people recognize that, and it therefore lies has been overlooked. Patent, meanwhile, is the overbearing, self-important sort, that maybe just isn't as special and as beautiful as it would like to think.