[r-t] Ben Constant's Yorkshire Royal

[John Camp]

At 22:01 on 15 January 2009, Mark Davies wrote:


> Now, this leads me on to speculate about something else.  On the
> Other List you [JEC] drew a comparison between compositions, and
> patents and copyright.  Most ringers would I think see a clear
> difference between the authorship compositions, and the creation of
> works of literature, music, paintings, or patentable inventions.

My analogy was made in the context of whether a composition which has
been composed by two different people independently should be
designated as 'arranged'.

A patent needs 'novelty', whereas copyright needs 'originality'.
These are different.  'Novel' means no-one's done it before;
'original' means 'all your own work'.  You can consequently infringe a
patent even if you didn't know of the previous invention, whereas you
infringe copyright only if you have copied.  The analogy was meant to
help in sorting out how we think about (ringing) compositions.

<snip>

> In fact I think that the total number of possible changeringing
> compositions is directly comparable to the total possible number of
> novels, or inventions, or even works of art.  All are countably
> finite sets.

I don't think that this is far off my own thoughts.  You can easily
take the view that all inventions are 'out there' somewhere.  Look at
drug patents, as a prime example.

JEC