[MUD-Dev] Intellectual property

[Jeff Kesselman]

At 09:34 PM 6/11/97 PST8PDT, you wrote:
>Dr. Cat wrote:
>> 
>> Any idea I've ever mentioned anywhere publically, or ever do in the
future, is 
>> absolutely free for anyone to use anywhere in any way, commercially or 
>> non-commercially, with or without credit.  
>
>I think there's one thing that a lot of the 'intellectual property'
>jockeys 
>in the world overlook, which is that nothing happens in a vacuum.

Thsi is a misunderstanding of intellectual property which is very common--
the myth of the idea.

I laid out in another note the catagories of protection the variosua reas
of law give.  "Ideas" as sucha re nto rpotected b yany of them.

The closest is patent, and in patent there is athe cocnept of "prior art".
if the process  in question can be shown to have been in use before the
granting of the patent by someoen other then the patent holder then the
patent is not valid.