Australian Defense Scientists Plagiarizing Trade Secrets 60
An anonymous reader writes "At least five businesses have alleged senior officers in the Defence Science and Technology Organization have plagiarized intellectual property for their own research [free reg. required] and then passed it on to government business partners to develop a rival product. There are fears that IP plagiarizing could increase with the new Defence Trade Controls Act passed last year despite warnings from the universities it would drive research offshore. Once the trial period ends Australian high-tech researchers will face up to 10 years jail for sending an e-mail or making an overseas phone call without a government permit."
All nations have laws legalising this behaviour (Score:4, Insightful)
Governments place themselves ABOVE IP laws when it comes to so called 'national defence'. You don't think, for instance, the Americans told the Russians to stop work on nuclear weapons, because the yanks had patented all the technology provided by the international scientists that America had accumulated from the period of WW2 and after?
Patents are civilian mechanisms- always have been and always will be. No nation will allow issues of 'defence' to be hamstrung by issues of who invented what. So why are the owners of Slashdot pushing this NON-STORY? There is always an agenda here. Let me guess, Slashdot is about to start pushing the line that Iran are 'bad guys' cos all their civilian nuclear technology was invented by Israelis, or some other such zionist garbage. Are we about to see another attempt to get the sheeple behind anti-Iranian propaganda, using this new tactic.
And yes, before the usual vile shills dribble about how THIS story is about a nation in the West, I should point out this is simply the tactic of LEGITIMISATION- first of all establish a false principle, and then use that false principle to attack your real 'enemy'.
And let me make another thing clear. IF the excuse of ignoring IP laws for defence work leads to patent abuse using to give commercial advantage in NON-defence industries, the patent holders can take action in civil courts. The route by which the infringement happened is NOT a defence against prosecution.
So, again ALL nations steal each others secrets when making war weapons, or systems that serve the same, and this is TOTALLY legal. There are, and never will be any UN conventions or treaties prohibiting such behaviour (see if you can figure out why). But, this fact does NOT protect ordinary non-defence companies in the same nations if they infringe IP laws, even if they were given the information to do so by people working in the defence fields. This is not a difficult thing to understand.
Re:All nations have laws legalising this behaviour (Score:3, Insightful)
This sounds fine at first blush, but since most 'war work' these days is contracted out to private companies it's clear that it can be very hard to define where the legal part ends and the illegal part starts.