Spring 2012
- Exploring the Arctic from Space
- What has Facebook done to us?
- What has Facebook done to us?
- Is complex life a freak accident?
- The triumph of Human Rights: dream or nightmare?
- The lure of the Kremlin: the court of Ivan the Terrible and global networks in the 16th century
- Cutting to cure cancer the 'the limits set by nature'
- The mystery of Master Humphrey: one of Dickens's most enigmatic characters
- John Bull vs Stinkomalee: Tory opposition in the early days of the University of London (now UCL)
- The metaphysics of concrete
- Genetic testing for risk of heart disease: fact or fiction?
- From Euclid to modern geometry: do the angles of a triangle really add up to 180?
- The Great American Novel: how and why?
- Patents stop people doing things. So why are they a good thing?
- Having it all: dispelling the myths about work and motherhood
- The search for genius and Einstein's brain
- 3D imaging: nanotechnology and the quest for better medical sensors
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Patents stop people doing things. So why are they a good thing?
13 March 2012
6 March 2012
The Rt. Hon. Professor Sir Robin Jacob (UCL Laws)
The public debate about patents is old and never stops. Here is what Jeremy Bentham said: 'So long as men are governed by unexamined prejudices and led away by sounds, it is natural for them to regard Patents as unfavourable to the encrease of wealth. So soon as they obtain clear ideas to annex to these sounds, it is impossible for them to do otherwise than recognize them to be favourable to that encrease: and that in so essential a degree, that the security given to property can not be said to be compleat without it'. This lecture will put the debate in modern context and show why Bentham was right.
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