Firefox market share bounces back 6704

There's also trademark law, which is different from both of the others. In a (crude) nutshell:

1. You can own a trademark forever, but only in a particular industry (e.g. Apple Music vs. Apple Computer), and you must defend it or run the risk of losing it.

2. A patent gives you a monopoly over (almost) any use of an idea, but expires after (more or less) 17 years, after which anyone can use it. There's no need to defend it, you can pick and choose who you enforce it against.

3. A copyright explicitly does not cover ideas, merely particular expressions of them. It theoretically expires after a while (though the law keeps changing to extend them lately). There's no need to defend it, you can pick and choose who you enforce it against.

Each of them is quite different from the others; in many ways they are completely orthogonal. Lumping them under the term "intellectual property" is not just lazy but disingenuous.

-- Sincerely,

Ray Ingles (313) 227-2317

"When it comes to gas, Americans need it cheap, and the president had better get it for us, or else, and we don't care how. If it takes a hundred thousand dead Iraqi 'soldiers' to keep gas below two bucks a gallon - when the rest of the world pays five and up - then that's what it takes." - Bill Maher, "When You Ride Alone You Ride With bin Laden"