Linus Torvalds Quotes

I am a strong believer that intellectual property rights need to be protected.

Unfortunately, the rights to 'System Shock' trademark and copyright are both up in the air.

The right of an inventor to his invention is no monopoly - in any other sense than a man's house is a monopoly.

An intellectual property worker will take copyright protection on everything he can get.

For better or worse, we are the Court of Appeals for the Hollywood Circuit. Millions of people toil in the shadow of the law we make, and much of their livelihood is made possible by the existence of intellectual property rights. But much of their livelihood - and much of the vibrancy of our culture - also depends on the existence of other intangible rights: The right to draw ideas from a rich and varied public domain, and the right to mock, for profit as well as fun, the cultural icons of our time.

There are people out there who don't see value in intellectual property, and so they're always going to have a problem if there are lawsuits involving intellectual property.

You can't trademark the word 'sci-fi.'

There is no such thing as intellectual property.

Vigorous enforcement of copyrights themselves is an important part of the picture. But I don't think that expanding the legal definition of copyright outside of actual copyright infringement is the right move.

You cannot steal somebody's intellectual property. Law and justice protect.

A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid.

The question of trademark is pretty unsettled in the open source world. The trademark is important in a consumer product, but there are a few groups who feel it's a restriction they can't live with.

What everybody misses here is that we are doing the same thing my father did. He licensed and litigated and protected his property, and we have to follow the same tradition, because the way the law reads, if you don't protect it, you lose it.

I am explicitly not opening the giant can of worms that is the ongoing current discussion of patent, copyright, and trademark reform.

Every name in a TV show has to be run by the legal department first.

In a recent decision of the Supreme Court, not made, however, by the full court, and concurred in by only four justices, it was held that the seller of a patented mimeograph could bind the purchaser to use only his ink in the machine, though the ink was not patented.

People equate patents with secrecy, that secrecy is what patents were designed to overcome. That's why the formula for Coca-Cola was never patented. They kept it as a trade secret, and they've outlasted patent laws by 80 years or more.

… the pursuit of civil rights by copyright.

If you go to talk to Disney about anything related to Mickey Mouse, if you can even get the meeting, you're going to get 50 people in that room. That is the crown jewel of their brand, and so they protect it. And so for better or worse, the crown jewel of my legacy still remains Steve Urkel and Stefan Urquelle.

An e-bike is like headphones, you can say you have patents, but people will still copy.

Judges decide upon copyright law. They decide upon trademark law. They decide upon scientific issues. They decide upon very complex technical issues on a daily basis. So you must have confidence in the Supreme Court, that they will apply their mind and they will come out with a decision consistent with the Constitution.

Technology people have as much interest in protecting patents as the entertainment industry.

As I understand it, I am being paid only for my work in arranging the words; my property is that arrangement. The thoughts in this book, on the contrary, are not mine. They came freely to me, and I give them freely away. I have no "intellectual property," and I think that all claimants to such property are theives.

There is no fair use to take something that doesn't belong to you. That's not fair use.

I'm not an attorney or a person who does intellectual property .