Not what you do, but how you do it.
The difficulties inherent in controlling the flow of information that the internet facilitates raise ongoing questions about intellectual property rights. Many of us go so far as to ask whether it's possible, or advisable, to constrain the flow of this information, to protect the interests of those who produce it. Others (often companies who hold the rights) insist that without constraints there would be no initiative to produce anything new. Toeing the line between the interests of the public and of the individual is system of copyright which, if and when it works, maintains a balance between the need of the public to make use of what has been produced, and the need of the producer to profit from his or her efforts. Just what intellectual property is, and what it isn't, has been, and remains, a hotly debated issue. Quite clearly it's something different from mechanical inventions, but perhaps the difference isn't quite as distinguishable as we might expect.
It was on this day, in 1842, that the U.S. Congress passed a law creating a new form of patent - the design patent. As a result of this law, not only inventions that were in some tangible way useful for producing something, or for performing part of a particular task, were patentable. From this date on new and original designs became patentable as well. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that the first patent issued under this new act was for typefaces and borders. That patent was awarded, later in 1842, to one George Bruce who designed those new typefaces. I choose to see this new law as recognition that form (if it hadn't done so even earlier) was already starting to take precedence over content. And that fact, one small step in the ever-changing definition of intellectual property, seems like a rather good reason to remember a date such as this.
Go to: The Boidem takes a vacation.