They hang the man and flog the woman that steal the goose from off the common, but let the greater villain loose that steals the common from the goose - so go the words of a traditional nursery rhyme. Until a 1998 federal court decision, a Minnesota publisher claimed to own every federal court decision, including Roe v.Wade and Brown v Board of Education. A Texas company was recently allowed to claim a patent on basmati rice, a kind of rice grown in India for hundreds of years. The Mining Act of 1872 is still in effect, allowing companies to buy land from the government at $5 per acre if they...