Does IBM Freeing Patents Really Need An Explanation?

from the scary dept

Want to know just how far the debate over intellectual property has been skewed these days? A few months after IBM decided to free up approximately 500 patents they weren't really using in hopes of stimulating growth in other areas, the NY Times felt it was necessary to write a whole article explaining how it was actually possible to profit from freely sharing information. The disturbing part is that the article frames this in a way suggesting that most business people these days probably wouldn't think it was possible to profit by releasing info so that others could improve on it and offer more that will come back to help IBM. This is what we get when we allow our education system to be outsourced to the entertainment industry, who go around telling kids that anything free is obviously bad and "stolen."

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