A ‘Patent’ on Marriage?
GoogleNews headline: Heterosexuals Hold ‘Patent’ On Marriage, Calif. Appeals Court Told.
Oh really? Well, if you’re sure that’s what you want, mister attorney… A time-limited monopoly on marriage you shall have.
To think, all this time we misunderstood what the ’sanctity of marriage’ movement was saying. We thought they wanted to ban gay marriage, but it turns they just want to delay it for 20 years.
And okay, maybe it’s not an ideal victory for the gay rights movement: there is, for example, some danger of evergreening. That is, the patent-holder (and who, by the way, will get to claim having invented marriage? I’m pretty sure there’s a fair amount of prior art documentation on that one…) might, 19 years in to the life of the marriage patent, conveniently ‘discover’ a new use that will allow for the patent monopoly to be extended (ie, in addition to the original specification of marriage as ‘the legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife’, a new application might claim ‘hey look, this ‘marriage’-invention can also be used as great fodder for kitschy sitcoms!’).
Nonetheless, it’s a pretty significant step for the ’sanctity of marriage’ movement to admit that they don’t have permanent exclusive rights to exclusive commitments.
And no wonder: patents can be pretty costly to maintain, especially when you’ve got to defend them in lawsuits all the time, the way these folks are…
