Z:gnu-www-ja-stallman-mec-india--588eab-Now, copyrights exist automati/en

Now, copyrights exist automatically. Whenever anything is written, it's copyrighted. Patents are issued through an expensive application process. There is an expensive fee and even more expense in paying lawyers, which of course tends to be good for big companies. And the patent office says that it only issues patents for things that are unobvious. However, practically speaking, in many patent offices the criterion is unobvious to somebody with an IQ of fifty. And they have all sorts of excuses to ignore the fact that whenever any programmer looks at it, his first statement is &ldquo;this is absurd, it's obvious.&rdquo; They say &ldquo;well, this is hindsight.&rdquo; So they just have an excuse to completely ignore the judgment of everybody who really is a programmer.