Rick Baudé Wrote:
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> Katherine Griffis-Greenberg Wrote:
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> -----
> > Rick Baudé Wrote:
> >
> ------------------------------------------------
> > > At the risk of playing "devils advocate"
> a role I hate. Hawass and Egypt might be within
> his rights. Not only that but the Egyptians
> could file "design patents" on any and all
> monuments (just like coca cola has a design patent on
> their bottle. And McDonald's has or had a
> patent on their french fry box, and Col. Sanders
> had a patent on the recipe for his Kentucky
> Fried Chicken.
> >
> > Which they all personally created. Neither
> Hawass nor the modern Egyptians can copyright,
> patent or trademark the ancient monuments, of which
> they personally did not create. Period. Read
> your law on this subject.
>
> I've read the law and reviewed hundreds of patents
> and design patents, and I see nothing that
> absolutely forbids them from patenting anything.
> The patent office knows that the human imagination
> is so breathtaking that they said you can patent
> "Any assemblage of matter." The pyramids or the
> sphinx for that matter the pyramids and the sphinx
> would fall in that category, all they have to do
> is figure out something unique like putting a
> telescope in front of the sphinx and patenting "A
> method for viewing and photographing ancient
> Egyptian Monuments". Before you say it's
> ridiculous, trust me I've researched absurd
> patents and there's some lulu's out there. Would
> it hold up?

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As I suspected you have glossed over my point completely.

Agreed that anything can be patented but recall the following phrase that is included in any patent law: "...your invention..."

Hawass and the modern Egyptian population did not "invent" the pyramids, nor did they personally originate the concept in their minds. Unless the PTO and other copyrighting organisations buy into collective race memory as a form of "mass invention", there's no way modern Egypt/ians can patent, copyright, or trademark any ancient monument in their own country.

>I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that it
> would. For instance somebody once said "build a
> better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to
> your door." Will guess what there are over a
> thousand patents on mouse traps, most of them some
> variation on the snap trap. How about calendars?
> Do you think that the patent rights to the
> calendar ended 70 years after the death of Julius
> Caesar? Not by a long shot, I found what looks
> like about a thousand or so patents on Calendars
> and all of them are some variation of the Julian
> calendar.

Considering that the present calendrical system is based upon the Gregorian calendar, your argument fails. At best, the Gregorian is a different system from the Julian, and at worst, it is an improvement - which requires original thought by its creator. Yet, the concept of time reckoning in a calendrical system is not patentable: it's an abstraction and abstractions are not patentable (see below).

Further, the Julian calendar is based upon the calendars of the Egyptians, via the Ptolemies. So even Julius Caesar didn't own the "rights" to his own calendar system, as the Egyptians had already conceived of the 365 day year and the leap year day before Julius Caesar came along.

The first vending machine was invented
> over 2,000 years ago by Heron of Alexandria the
> patents on that would have long expired. But
> again there are thousands of patents on vending
> machines today and more being filed all the time.

What is being patented is the mechanism by which the product is dispensed to the consumer. You surely don't think that you today receive your Snickers bar by Hero's machine (not Heron) where "a lever which opened up a valve which let some water flow out. The pan continued to tilt with the weight of the coin until it fell off, at which point a counter-weight would snap the lever back up and turn off the valve," do you?

For example, Hero's machine would not explain the multi-product vending machine which has to decide which product to dispense to you, or the various mechanical systems used to dispense (roll down, drop style, corkscrew, mixing style (for drinks), etc.). These are all patentable ideas which can be used within a vending machine system, but are the conceptions of individual persons or companies who created them.

The orginal idea of a vending machine may belong to Hero, but no modern patent owner in the vending machine business owns anything more than improvements upon the mechanisms of delivery. Those would be considered innovations which improved an original concept and are, of course, patentable.

> Don't forget we're not talking about some minor
> pyramidiot who tries to patent the GP as a giant
> water pumping system, we're talking about the
> Egyptian Govt. who has the power and the resources
> if they choose, to pursue a patent
> fight.　

I don't care who they are: IMO, any patent office worth their salt would turn down such a request as patently ridiculous (sorry, couldn't resist) since the requesters did not create the product for which they are applying for patent (or copyright or trademark).

Recall that the main premise of any intellectual property law is to allow you to own things you create in a similar way to owning physical property. You can control the use of your intellectual property, and use it to gain reward. Without it, no inventor would bother to create and patent his work if he didn't think he could somehow reward from it.

Further, since Hawass and the Egyptian government cannot claim they personally created pyramids or other ancient monuments in Egypt, any right to patent, copyright or trademark the ancient monument design would have expired after 15 -25 years of creation, according to most countries' versions of intellectual property law. From the best of interpretations, their "design patent" expired millennia ago.

I wrote:
>> > Further, by now even the design of the
> pyramid shape has also fallen into public domain in
> > architectural terms.
>
> Perhaps, but with a design patents you can patent
> they pyramid shape for your particular design.
> Personally I think this is just another one of
> Hawass's grandstanding gestures.

From my understanding of intellectual property law, you cannot modernly patent the "pyramid shape" since its design has been within the public domain since at least the Roman period. You can provide an enhancement to the pyramidal design and patent that, but the original shape itself is not patentable in and of itself as an architectural design. Further, pyramid structures are not unique to Egyptian culture alone, as New World pyramidal structures developed independently of the Egyptian style, as did Chinese pyramidal like structures.

There's even more to consider: can the shape of a pyramid even be patented?

Most pyramid structures are based upon an abstraction of the concept of mountains (a natural form), or possibly from observed natural phenomena, such as observing sunlight rays falling to earth in straight line points in such a way to create a pyramidal shape. In both cases, the shape had significance in the religious belief system of a culture, which is why the culture "mimicked" the shape in structures.

There is an express position in intellectual property law that laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas have been held not patentable. So whether you consider the pyramid a mimic of a mountain, or an abstraction from observed sunlight shapes, neither is patentable.

As the US Supreme Court noted in the case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303:

"...The laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas have been held not patentable. See Parker v. Flook, 437 U.S. 584 (1978); Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63, 67 (1972); Funk Brothers Seed Co. v. Kalo Inoculant Co., 333 U.S. 127, 130 (1948); O'Reilly v. Morse, 15 How. 62, 112-121 (1854); Le Roy v. Tatham, 14 How. 156, 175 (1853). Thus, a new mineral discovered in the earth or a new plant found in the wild is not patentable subject matter. Likewise, Einstein could not patent his celebrated law that E=mc2.; nor could Newton have patented the law of gravity. Such discoveries are "manifestations of . . . nature, free to all men and reserved exclusively to none." Funk, supra, at 130."

So, is a replication of a mountain or an abstraction of a shape from observable phenomena patentable?

All of the following are questions I'm sure would be raised if Hawass or the Egyptian government tried to "patent" the Pyramids:

- Did they personally create the structures they wish to patent/copyright/trademark?

- If not, are the creators of the structures in question able to trademark/copyright/patent (i.e. are they alive and able to register their intellectural property)?

- Is the registration of intellectual property rights within the statute of limitations?

- Is the design patentable (or is it an abstraction, derived from natural phenomena, etc.)?

I think it could be effectively argued that in all cases, the answers to the above would be "no," which would defeat any attempt to assert intellectual property rights over the structures of ancient Egypt, specifically the Pyramids.

My

Katherine Griffis-Greenberg, J. D.

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DISCLAIMER:

Not a practicing attorney, and no attorney-client relationship is created. This response is for discussion purposes only. It isn't meant to be legal advice. If you wish legal advice, seek out an attorney in your own state who is familiar with your state's laws and applications thereof.