Intellectual Property Overview

Iz explains an Alien concept

Izcan pushes through the long grass. The wet, from the recent rain slicks back his fur. In most spots the grasses along his path are well over his head. A distant or bird's eye onlooker would merely see a waving of the undulating greens, unless they were lucky enough to be looking at a particularly bare spot. This is unlikely given the extent, thousands of miles, you might say, an ocean of grass, spotted by clumps of trees every mile or so, covering this part of OO (the Dgnian's home world). Izcan, or as his friends called him, Iz, is taking his time, meandering this way and that searching for animals to chase and spotting his scent and over a truly enormous area.  Although he looks similarly to his distance ancestors the dog, there is as a great an evolutionary gulf between him and his doggish ancestors as there was between thirtieth century humans and the chimpanzee. Not that now, if there is a now, is the thirtieth century, that time being so distant in the past as to be the history of history, the humans being long gone, except for their ruins, relics and some rather interesting writings.  The Dgnian explorers of the human worlds invariably arrived at fully functioning cities.  The streets perfectly clean, the utilities all functioning, the automatic doors opening upon approach and the energy converters proffering perfectly edible food upon request.  A review of the workings of the cities revealed self repairing nano-robots keeping everything in good repair. But of the humans themselves, there was not a sign.  All the beds were made, nothing was out of place.  It was as if the inhabitants of these great cities had simply decided to leave, taking nothing with them.  This of course was, and continues to be a treasure trove of technological innovations and opportunities for discourse for the Dgnians.  Of particular interest, beyond the mere technical innovations found in the city and as described in the digital libraries found in each city, have been the system of laws and the ideas engendered therein. It is these writings which has engendered Iz'st  trip as the representative of his pack, meeting in the place of Falling Water along with all other representatives. The discussion will focus on some odd concepts; that of ownership of that which you can not touch or smell or taste.  The translated work, the original title being “An Overview of Intellectual Property” to him screamed disaster, if applied to any type of pack interaction, and yet, it certainly provided a framework of thought and some solutions to how the trade of such things which heretofore had left many a pack unsure as to how to react to treatises from the Lil.  The Lil are a race found roughly fifty years earlier which had populated the three planets in their own system habitable by their kind as well as a star system just two light years away from their home system.  They were still moving from spot to spot at sub-light speeds. The importance behind the upcoming debates is based on the fact that the Lil's society is very similar to that of the humans for a time. They had had, for a short while, a society which did not create and share alike, but instead reduced, or tried to reduce, all things to a numerical value.  The reality had eventually been had that such was not actually possible and value was based on the effort of the group and not the individual, but during the heyday of  the democratic / monetary system numerous ideas had been invented which were of interest and quite possibly use. In particular a method of valuing things which you can not hold.

Iz, while mulling the concepts has wandered into a clump of chicken bone trees.  The branches, heavy with the soft chewy fruit with the crunchy center that every Dgnian (the name Iz's people have for their species) loves. As he plucks and chews he remembers from his history books that such trees are not actually native to the world, but were created some thousand years ago by one of the more revered and remembered pack.  Had the idea of patents, as put by the human text, been in sway, then only that pack would have had use of the genetic combination that created these trees, unless of course, the other pack agreed to license the concept until the idea entered the public domain. The humans had allowed patents to control concepts for twenty years, or twenty seasons as thought of by a Dgnian, after which the idea would have gone into the public domain, that being the state of all things under the pack.  There was also the concept of copyright, differentiated from patent in that copyright did not protect ideas, but instead creations creations that had been set in some sort of indelible format.  This typ of intellectual property was protected for varying periods of time past the life time of the creator, that being 120 seasons for an individual or 170 seasons if for a made up entity, what they called a corporation.

Evidently all of the concepts had been arrived at by a profession called lawyers.  Iz's representative status as advocate for his pack is very similar to that of the status of lawyer, though he is still some what unsure of the difference between lawyer and attorney as they often seemed to be used interchangeably.  Mulling the concept in his mind, lawyer, attorney, attorney lawyer, and the sub-categories mentioned in the treatise, intellectual property lawyer, intellectual property attorney, patent attorney, patent lawyer, trademark attorney, trademark lawyer, copyright attorney, copyright lawyer, licensing attorney, licensing lawyer and then the abbreviations – ip attorney, ip lawyer, ip law firm – and then on into the numerous other sub-categories, military lawyer, military attorney, etc (the latter being the very troubling) and on an on. From all of Iz's reading the best he can figure is that a lawyer is in individual who has gone to and passed law school and an attorney is an individual who has passed something called the bar exam, a test controlled by area based packs, though not the greater pack.

Iz, sated, pushed his way into a hograss clump, - another genetic invention of hinter years -it's center hollow, this one with a smaller surround, as opposed to the larger hograss which could hold as many as twenty individuals.  Iz had never been to Falling Water before, but it was said that  hograss larger enough to hold 100,000 individuals had been grown; and many of them were not the simple clump style, but had been engineered to grow in many shapes and sizes, with numerous levels.  He had of course seen transmitted images and tasted forwarded scents of the vast array of hograss in Falling Water, as well as some of the more famous of the growths, but transmitted senses are just not  the same as being there.  The hograss clump he has chosen is one of the smaller ones which will hold the heat of his body.  He could of course ask his personal assistant to emit heat thus enabling him to heat a larger abode, but this is wasteful and unnecessary. As Iz drifts to sleep he imagines himself a human, working as an attorney in an intellectual property law firm.  Although he is both apprehensive and at the same time excited about speaking before the general assembly he thinks he would enjoy the work of a ip prosecution attorney, and even that of a litigator so long as he did not have to go to court on a regular basis. Iz had had to practice what he was going to say many times.  First in front of a reflector and then later in front of the elders of his pack until they were satisfied that he knew all of the answers to any question the assembly elders might ask. It had been a lot of work.

Iz, up with the sun, enthused with his mission, decides to pick up the pace.  He bounds through the grass enjoying the swish of the stalks and the smell of the morning dew.  Although he has plenty of time to reach his intended goal, if he does not make time, he will be forced to take to the air, riding the public gravways.  The wind in your hair and even the high flying perspective can be fun and it is the way most will take to arrive at Falling Waters on time; but most Dgnian's lived a long ways and although Iz has never been there before,  his pack's home is running distance. As he bounds through the grass, enjoying the stretch of his muscles, the feeling of his heart beating faster and the crunch of his paws in the dried chaff of the smaller grasses near the ground he contemplates the problem and his arguments.

The Lil do not have the concept of pack and do not live by the terms of the Dgnian.  In so many ways they live and think much the same as the ancient humans during their democratic stage.  When something is given to them without a request for recompense they accept it as if there is no obligation to move the group forward and instead just hope or ask for more.  This is all very well and good for the Lil, but but the end result would be that they would take all the Dgnian have to offer, and not only food and shelter, but core resources of the Worlds as well as the Dgnian's methods of how to do things, make things work. When the pack first came upon the Lil on a planet some 200 light years away from OO they had been accepted as just another pack by the exploring pack.  They had acted as was only natural.  The Lil were a friendly sort, though grotesquely ugly – long green bodies with hundreds of tendrils – they did not have specific body parts like Dgnians or as humans had had, other then being generally long and tall and they vibrated their entire exterior skin in order to speak which to the unaided ear sounded like long wispers and short  groans -; always wanting to talk about how to do this or that, always quite willing to help themselves to pack resources, many of which were often in short supply when traveling so far from OO or one of the other worlds which the pack had settled. Iz, thought that it just might have been fortunate that that pack had had to pack up and leave as soon as it had else the Lil might have learned much more then they had, including the location of OO and how to travel around time to avoid the long reaches of space.  Iz could just imagine thousands of Lil taking root and eating his planets plains as they had eaten their own world.

Iz's trip took another three days and he did not have to resort to calling for transport. His approach to the city had been tantalizing.  It had slowly risen in the distance.  First a seeming bump on the horizon and as he ran it grew and grew and grew until the hograss towered high above him.  His approach also brought sounds and smells which swelled until he just had to stop and concentrate in order to stop himself from being over whelmed.  The hackles on the back of his neck rising on their own accord.  He hoped that he would not have to attempt to speak over the incredible din.

Iz's speech

I have been asked by my pack to speak to you about the concept behind the terms intellectual property. To begin with the term property intimates the exclusive ownership of something which is of value.  As you know, we, as Dgnians do not each to ourselves own anything.  As such we do not have lawyers or attorneys which are individual paid to advocate for another person or entity who's interests are not their own.  We also do not have the basic concepts of patent, trademark, copyright, license or litigation. As such, I will begin by explaining these concepts as well as how these concepts were used by the ancient humans, before approaching my pack's proposal for how to deal with the Lils.