<story><title>No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany’s Industrial Expansion? (2010)</title><url>http://m.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-law-the-real-reason-for-germany-s-industrial-expansion-a-710976.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>littlestymaar</author><text>I had no idea about the situation in Germany, but it&amp;#x27;s a well-known fact that the current power of the Swiss chemical and pharmaceutical industry comes from the lack of patents law in Switzerland during the late 19th century[1]: a few French chemists moved to Switzerland to circumvent the French patents.&lt;p&gt;A well-known example is Alexander Clavel who, in 1859, founded Ciba AG, a silk-dyeing business using a French patent with no license. Ciba later became Ciba-Geigy, which later became Novartis. One of the biggest pharma corp in the world today.&lt;p&gt;Source: Swiss National Museum, Zurich.&lt;p&gt;[1] : Patents were only introduced in the Swiss law in 1907.</text></comment>
<story><title>No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany’s Industrial Expansion? (2010)</title><url>http://m.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-law-the-real-reason-for-germany-s-industrial-expansion-a-710976.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>skookumchuck</author><text>Curiously, we see a similar situation today with open source software. The free nature of it would seem to stifle creation of top quality open source software, but the reverse seems to be true. The open source business is thriving.</text></comment>