The Road Not Taken

In celebration of the many works finally coming off copyright protection, I thought I’d publish one of those works — Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. I feel a little bit odd publishing this; but, isn’t this the way that our IP system is supposed to work? Rather than denying inventors, authors, artists, etc. rights to their creations, they are granted an exclusive right for a limited period of time. After that time period lapses, the public then has the right to enjoy the creation.

Unfortunately, the patent system, through all of its §101 shenanigans, seems to have lost sight of that bargain.

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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