Cooking Millovian style: how intellectual property works.

• Author: Thompson, Douglas
• Position: Special Report on Intellectual Property

Your parents' families came to Canada from Millovia after the war. Your parents subsequently met in Canada and married. You were born in Canada, have never been to Millovia and do not speak Millovian. You grew up in a home that was furnished with Millovian style furnishings, inherited from your grandparents. On special occasions, the wonderful smell of biskies, boroskos, and other traditional Millovian dishes filled the home. On those occasions, your Uncle would come over and play Millovian tunes on a Zitharo, a lute like instrument unique to Millovia.

You look around at Canadian society and note it has become quite cosmopolitan. Canadians are eating tacos borrowed from Mexico, pizza and pasta borrowed from Italy, pyrogies from the Ukraine, sushi from Japan, curries from India, and many more dishes borrowed from other countries. More important, restaurants are flourishing. If one feels like eating food from China, one goes to a Chinese restaurant. Why not a Millovian restaurant?

From the moment that the concept of a Millovian restaurant entered your mind, you have become obsessed with the concept. Millovia is such a small country, most Canadians have never heard of it. However, it has such a rich cultural heritage, a Millovian restaurant will give Canadians an alternative dining choice. The decoration and music will be stimulating; the food delicious. The name for your restaurant will be Callen; named after the traditional Millovian cooking pot. All your life you have prepared yourself for this moment. You assisted your mother and father with the cooking for large family gatherings and learned how to make all of the traditional Millovian dishes. You took culinary arts in college and have been working for the past five years as a cook.

As you develop the concept in your mind, some problems come to mind. It takes two days to cook a meal in the traditional Millovian style. After weeks of experimenting, you develop a special cooker, that enables you to cook traditional Millovian style meals in less than an hour. This time flame is unacceptable for a fast food restaurant, but will enable you to provide a fine dining experience. The traditional Millovian chairs are uncomfortable. So uncomfortable, in fact, that Canadians will not find them acceptable. After considerable thought, you come up with an idea on how to modify a standard chair to make it look Millovian. These chairs do not look out of place with a traditional Millovian table, and yet...