PDA

View Full Version : IP law, the future of the new gold....



paulderol
July 24th, 2008, 05:04 PM
Ahoy team Ubuntu!

I'm considering a career in IP law, pending the reciept of my LSAT scores. I'm a relatively proficient Ubuntu user, and am developing my technical skills in the hardware department as a preperation for patents, and in media ownership for the rest.

Are there any lawyers in the house? what do you do? what can't you do? what difference are you making for the FOSS community?

The dream job here would be to work for EFF, the Linux Foundation, or any other FOSS company or nonprofit, perhaps eventually being [mega-dream here] part of the legal team that finally busts open M$'s 400+ patents of death that they claim GNU/Linux stole. Further options or desires would be to work with the ISO to homogenize and open communication protocols, or to protect p2p function in the name of large-scale distributed computing or piracy [which amount to basically the same].

the idea here is that the Internet is changing fundamentally all of our ideas about owning and controlling ideas. Information monopolies are more and more expensive to maintain, and they ultimately hurt users. There must be a way to keep rewarding creators without shackling users, and what that way might be is going to be determined within the next fifty or 100 years, by lawyers and software/hardware engineers.

what say you, Ubuntites?

IamReck
July 24th, 2008, 05:33 PM
Your first mistake, saying Intellectual Property. Never use the term.

Do you want to do Copyright, Patent or Trademarks?

paulderol
July 24th, 2008, 05:45 PM
i am unsure as of yet. i suppose copyright would allow me the most flexibility, as i am quite well stocked with professional and semi-professional artists who would need documents drafted, and therefore work for me to do, although the others would be effective towards my other ends.

Seeing as how software patents are now very hard to get [slashdot mentions the US patent office will make software patents difficult], this field may no longer be in my interest. the other end would be to work towards opening patented drivers, which i suppose would fall here...

trademark law is less appealing, as branding/marketing is less interesting to me than ownership of the idea itself, although i may be totally misguided on the distinction.

and what is the likelyhood of being able to meld any/all of these into a general "internet/technology law" practice? if so, what would then be the best area to move into, if that's even possible as a dream?

pardon my inexperience. and thank you for both your tip and reply!