Yeah, corporations are legal people, but can they invent or create? Maybe it is a legal truth that they can, but I'm guessing you could put a corporate charter in a room with pencils, paint brushes, raw material, etc for a million years and never get a creative work out of it. Can an entity unable to be creative actually have copyright or patents, under the wording of the US Constitution? I really am curious how we got to this state.
4. 'Ownership' is to a certain extent a legal fiction - it's simply a label we use to indicate when the government will use force, if necessary, to allow the 'owner' to do X and/or to prevent others from doing it.
5. In that sense, a patent or copyright conveys 'ownership' only in that the government will (upon a proper showing) enforce specified penalties against non-owners who do things they're not 'supposed' to do.
6. Congress long ago stated, in the relevant Acts of Congress, that patent- and copyright 'ownership' can be transferred to others, including corporations and other entities.
7. So basically, the brute fact is that 'ownership' of a patent or copyright can be transferred because: (i) Congress said so, and (ii) the guys with the black robes and gavels follow what Congress said, and (iii) the guys with the guns and badges go along, and (iv) ultimately, the guys with the BDUs and M-16s and tanks go along too.
8. The above doesn't automatically prove that Congress made the right call on this point -- but I don't think there's been much of a controversy about it in the past 200-plus years.
Ok, so basically corporations can "own" patents and copyrights because nobody's made a stink about it, and it seems to be working out pretty well?
The big reason I've been thinking about this is because I'm wondering what would happen if inventors and artists did own their work, and license it to their employers. Would science become a personally profitable career, or would contracts be written up that continued to pay out 5-figure salaries in exchange for the occasional billion dollar invention? Would a contract exchanging a five-figure salary for perpetual rights to an invention that earns billions per year be valid, or would terms get better for inventors? I really have no idea, but the thought has been bugging me for a few months now.
EDIT: it looks like HN has decided we've been talking to long, so I probably won't reply to any of your replies to me in a timely manner. It's been an interesting start of a discussion, anyhow :)
