Saturday, January 07, 2006

"Stay the hell off my intellectual property!"


Bretheren, sistren, there is a glorious new frontier, a vast and unclaimed wilderness, overflowing with untapped bounty and livelihood. And it is located in the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. Go forth! Explore it. Discover a place where nobody has yet laid claim and start producing!

I, myself, have been doing some prospecting for quite some time, and it's worked out pretty nicely. I already own seven logos, three song titles, four cartoon characters (including but not limited to names, pictorial designs, and story developments), two food recipes, and a particular shade of lime-green. Many of these intellectual properties are already known and familiar to some of you. You are welcome to browse (with expressed consent, of course), but they are not for the taking. Luckily, there should be plenty of land for everyone! Land as far as the imagination can see.

Nevertheless, come quicly. Just yesterday I saw a young man walking out of a record store with the words Star Battles imprinted on the center of his white t-shirt. He clearly wrote it himself with a black permanent marker. As surely as day, a white unmarked van was there waiting for him at the curb, and a man dressed in black stepped out to hand him a subpoena. Even now, the frontier is changing. The days of roaming and freely partaking are all but over. The voice that demands free and shared ownership to the land of ideas is the voice of the naive, the voice of the savage-minded. Even now there are people lurking to steal YOUR jokes, YOUR quotes, YOUR legacy! Claim your IP today, before your ideas are marketed by someone less gifted than you.

And stay the HELL off my intellectual property!