I'm not sure what's more interesting about the Pravda story I'm linking to below; the invention or the wisdom of the inventor's teacher.

This headline caught my eye: "Russian school student invents flawless computer program for copyright protection." No computer program is flawless that I know of, but it seems Russian student Sasha Matorin has invented a software program that is quite good at detecting plagiarism. (That will make him popular with his fellow students!)

It turns out the headline didn't completely fulfill my hopes, as this technology only works on text, not on music or movies. But as a lifelong writer I'm pleased, and there likely are eBook implications (see my obsession on this topic here and here, for starters). Unfortunately I dropped out of Russian in my second year so not only can't I speak it I definitely can't write anything in it, and thus Master Matorin's program won't detect any plagiarism of any texts in Russian by me; hopefully his software works with English as well, if it doesn't I'm sure it can be tailored for that.

If this were a kid at Palo Alto High School, the next thing we'd be asking is, "When does he start licensing the software and buy himself a Lotus?" (The car, not the software.) Well, turns out IP in the former Soviet Union isn't quite what the U.S. offers. Some Commonists might like that. But here's what Matorin's teacher had to say, according to the Pravda article:

Andrei Novikov says that sometimes school children produce real inventions especially in the field of physics and informatics. Shasha's classmate Roma Byalov built a computer remote control device for a toy tractor. The boy became a winner of the All-Russian engineering competition among the youngsters. Another graduate of the same Saratov school designed a new fire alarm system detector. But in most case all those inventions end up sitting on the dusty shelves, says the teacher with a sigh. Today it is easy to claim ownership on something that is not yours. Meanwhile, it is extremely difficult to patent your own invention.

Maybe the reason so many Russian inventions are coming from students is that, by the time they've grown up, they've realized the economic futility of devoting time to such things.

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:47 PM | Books, International, Patents, Software

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