There's a lot of chatter on the blogs over IP rights recently. From the
SL Bloggers forum concerning the new dos and don'ts with
SL branding, to Chez Nabob's
anti-IP-theft campaign, ironically
ripped off inspired by PETA's anti-fur campaign.
However the big news for the day is that consummate stealer of ideas and self promoting patent mogul, Thomas Edison, has been shown to be the non-inventor of yet another item.
Few seem to be aware that Edison's incandescent lightbulb was a pretty close copy of Joseph Swan's bulb, patented in the UK a year before Edison received his US patent. His disdain for Georges Méliès copyright on
Le voyage dans la Lune was apparent when he had hundreds of copies made of the film and kept all the royalties for himself, leading to Méliès eventual bankruptcy.
But thanks to Dr. Fabre's mention in
The Heliograph, it seems that Edison's claims to be the first to record the human voice have been shot down as well.
ABC Technology reports that French inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville made a recording of a young woman singing 'Au clair de la lune' some 17 years before Edison's recording of Mary Had a Little Lamb.
Edison obviously liked nicking things from the French.
