Normally this Blog is focusing on patent and trade mark law, thereby systematically neglecting copyright law, but today I'll make an exception. I just stumbled over a video clip of some presentation given by Mr. Larry Lessig titled: How creativity is being strangled by the law. As announced on the TED website, he pins down the key shortcomings of some dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws in the field of copyright, and reveals how bad laws beget bad code.
Mr Larry Lessig is currently professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of its Center for Internet and Society. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications.
What Mr Lessig is demanding in view of a clash of modern technology with "dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws" is common sense. Perhaps even in the field of patent law it might be worth to think about common sense and what it might mean with regard to patentability of computer-implemented inventions or collaborative concepts in frameworks like Open Innovation.