Imitation, Flattery, Patents and Copyright

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

For the upcoming Jurassic Park movie, they invented a new dinosaur! Most of us would probably feel the way Nilay Patel felt about that:

“The whole point of Jurassic Park is to bring real dinosaurs into the present day...Take away the real dinosaurs, and you're just left with a made-up monster movie.”

So why then did they invent a new dino? Tim Carmody responded to Patel on Twitter on the possible reason:

“We need clear IP on the dinosaur, the toy companies say they can’t have any copycats this time.”

Wait a minute…You can get IP (intellectual property/patents/copyright etc) on a species that roamed the earth? Is that insane or what?

Of course, IP is not always a bad thing. If it weren’t there, what would be the incentive for anyone to come up with new ideas, like lifesaving pharmaceuticals?

Then again, IP does cover areas between pharma and, I don’t know, dinosaurs. Like industrial design. Apple’s head of design, Jony Ive, said when he sees other companies copy Apple’s designs, it makes him angry. As he told Vanity Fair:

“When you're doing something for the first time, for example with the phone, and you don't know it's going to work, and you spend seven or eight years working on something, and then it's copied — I have to be honest, the first thing I think isn't 'ooh, that was flattering.'”

And added sarcastically:

“All those weekends I could have had at home with my lovely family but didn't, but the flattery made up for it.”

Well ok, I can see Ive’s point. But IP for dinos? Really?