Shortly before moving to Vietnam, I asked one of my uncles who had fought for the South Vietnamese Army (the Army of the Republic of Vietnam): ‘The South Vietnamese were fighting against communism, but what were they fighting for?’ He replied: ‘Freedom and democracy.’ But in Nha Trang, as I read Hồ Chí Minh’s writings, I saw that ‘freedom and democracy’ (tự do and độc lập) were also the exact words that Hồ and his followers used to describe what they were fighting for. How could two sides use the same words to describe their goals and at the same time consider each other enemies? These questions led me to an interest in political theory, in how people in conflict could offer different meanings to concepts like ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, as well as different answers to questions such as: what is a good life? Should society be thought of as a contract or a family? What values should we prioritise? Who should rule? These questions seemed universal: questions that anyone, anywhere,...

Patents on processes and methods, however, complicate this dynamic even more. They are somewhat strange creatures in patent law. These inventions relate to the performance of particular steps, as opposed to a machine or object that could perform the process. In fact, a patent covering a method does not necessarily cover something physical. Instead, the steps of the process are covered. So, the intangibility dynamic is magnified—the intangible patent covers acts that, even in the real world, are fairly intangible. For example, a company could build a massive plant to use a patented method of producing a chemical. Under current law, the plant itself does not infringe upon the patent on the method. Only when someone hits the switch and turns it on—resulting in the steps of the method being performed—would there be infringement. Building the plant alone would not be sufficient.