Copyright vs Medicine: If this topic isn’t covered in your newspaper this weekend, get a new newspaper

"According to the New England Journal of Medicine, after thirty years of silence, authors of a standard clinical psychiatric bedside test have issued take down orders of new medical research. Doctors who use copies of the bedside test which will have been printed in some of their oldest medical textbooks are liable to be sued for up to $150,000. The New England Journal of Medicine makes the stark comparison that “Google, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter all use open-source software at the heart of their products” yet when it comes to medicine, developments are very often, very far from open-source. This case demonstrates the tragic state of affairs that even the ghosts of positively ancient abandoned copyrights for the very simplest of ideas can be used to block new medical work through legal bullying. The basic nature of the information that is protected in this case only begins to illustrate the harm that is really possible when even more powerful and innovative ideas are placed under lock and key for the rest of living memory...."