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Jobs and skills

Revision as of 00:37, 27 July 2009 by Ciaran (talk | contribs) (* [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9935876-16.html Bank of America has patented a way to manage off-shoring jobs])

When employees are working with patented ideas, companies can lay off staff without any fear that the layed off staff will start a competing company.

Companies can close their office in one country, open one in another country.

From the point of view of the ex-employee, they have skills that they're partially prohibited from making use of for finding a new job or starting their own company.

From the point of view of reducing unemployment, the country finds itself with many skilled people whose skills are unusable for 20 years.

This situation makes it clear that rather than being a form of "protection", software patents are a tool for exclusion. This argument is particular to software because with manufacturing, the layed off staff don't have a factory with which to compete anyway, so the existence of patents changes nothing in the case of jobs in the manufacturing industry.

Workers unions might see this as motivation to get active.

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