Can't copyright or patent an idea. People are free to steal them, openly, w/out paying ya a dime. For instance, should I own hyperdrive technology if I come up w/the idea, or should the first guy who is able to actually build a hyperdrive after years of hard work, great costs, and repeated failures? And if at the outset he knows I own the tech, what incentive does he have now to actually do all that work and create the first drive now? Will the first hyperdrive ever get made if I'm allowed ownership of the tech before any hyperdrive is ever successfully made?
One of the purposes behind IP law is to preserve an incentive for people to contribute to the greater scientific/artistic/etc... pool of knowledge. They have to balance the inventor's incentive to create that hyperdrive against being too restrictive by letting that guy put a stranglehold against any improvements or other uses of the technology after he finally makes it (thus patents are limited in time and have very specific requirements to qualify for one). The same balance plays out in copyright law too, though in a different way (but the interests and incentives the law wants to protect are the same). Giving a copyright holder *too* much power, for instance, can put a stranglehold on new creations and can be the death knell for a lot of great ideas that are never allowed to take form by overzealous copyright holders. Unfortunately, this country has forgotton some of this and has moved a little too much to this end of the spectrum, though the pendulum will probably swing back the other way eventually.
If ya ever have a great idea ya wanna sell:
1) tell no one
2) contact the potential buyer
3) have them sign a contract saying that they'll listen to your idea, and if they want to use it - after hearing it - for x amount of time (like 5 years) they have to pay ya (either some specific figure, or what some trusted third party will deem is appropriate), unless they can prove they had already come up w/the idea through independant means prior to your telling them about it (they probably have a lot of great ideas they haven't used yet, or that they are keepin' in the can as it were, so they'll need some protection like this to be convinced to even sign such an agreement in the first place).
4) in this way you can actually get paid for a mere idea w/out actually having to create anything and w/out having a copyright (copyrights require something tangible as well, the document, some of the code, a tape of your song, whatever) or patent.
Good news is though, ya have a copyright in stuff ya make even if ya don't file for one, the second your pen hits the paper, you have a legally enforceable copyright in what you're writing, as an example. Ya should still file though because filing serves as proof that you had it as of such and such date (otherwise someone might copy ya, then claim they did it first and you are copying them! This happened to me once, so always register!), and gives ya more legal resources to enforce your copyright if any legal troubles ever arise (and its cheap and easy to do, so what the hey, the benefits far outweigh the costs).
This concludes today's lesson. =>
~SDC~
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