Intellectual Property has become increasing relevant as society has shifted from away from smaller more agrarian communities towards larger, more technologically driven urban communities. In the past farming techniques did not need to be as closely guarded as the markets were relatively small and the need for cooperation high. The markets today are global and the corporations much larger, leading to a need for intellectual property protection along with a declining need for cooperation. Patents exist within these large markets to allegedly safeguard innovation. The inventor is allowed to profit off a patent for twenty years, either by producing it himself or licensing others to do. There is danger in protecting intellectual property this way. Under the current system a patent can be acquired without a product ever being manufactured, simply a broad idea is enough. This leads to patent trolling in which entities apply for a buy a large range of patents, many of which are not current
The past week of class has been enlightening, and not always in a positive way. It is easy for us, as students of progressive institution lauded for bringing together the best and the brightest, to assume that we are not ensnared in the same traps as the rest of American society. We are. The discussion in the past week has been filled with the same heated, bipolar rhetoric that has become a hallmark of American media. Presented with a simple fact, that computer science falls well short of diversity benchmarks, we could not have a discussion that would bring people together, but rather farther alienated members of our community. Those who felt affected by the lack of diversity shared their experiences only to be questioned at length and trivialized. Those who saw little problem with the issue were met with contempt and apparent judgment. The inability to communicate effectively and understand that dissenting opinions can lead to communal understanding and growth does nothing