Comments (43)

• quincunx

  Not to mention the fact that the patents were pure crap and were only vaguely related to the blackberry's technology.

  Published: March 3, 2006 8:15 PM

• jeffrey

  It really is an outrage and has nothing whatever to do with free enterprise. Enough of this stuff could kill any economy.

  Published: March 3, 2006 8:24 PM

• Vince Daliessio

  This makes me SICK. This is the best argument I have seen yet for ending the monopoly we call patent. Stephan?

  Published: March 3, 2006 10:43 PM

• Paul D

  There's probably 10 real-life examples of patents destroying wealth like this for every imaginary example of patents "spurring innovation".

  Published: March 4, 2006 9:03 AM

• sp3tt

  This is, to say the very least, disgusting. I can't think of a better real-life example of why patents suck. Now, they should be abolished not because they have bad consequences, but because they tell people what they are allowed to do with their property, based on the arbitrary judgement of some government bureuacrat, but most defenses I've seen of IP are utilitarian. This should be enough to disprove all their silly theories.

  612.5 million dollars less for R&D. Not to talk about the lawyers employed, or the bureaucracy of the USPTO, or the lobbying for even more absurd patent laws. Can anyone point me to a t-shirt that says "I love patents"? How hard can it be to understand: government granted monopolies do not, I repeat, do not, encourage innovation.

  Published: March 4, 2006 1:28 PM

• Win

  Why bother to invest in new ideas and products when someone can take your results at zero cost?

  Isn't protection of property and investment the whole idea behind IP and patent law?

  If so, why are libertarians arguing against the protection of property rights? I would think we should be thankful the system still works in this regard.

  Libertarians against property rights? Wake me up from the matrix, please.

  Published: March 4, 2006 2:05 PM

• Not Win

  Win,

  "Intellectual property" is an oxymoron. If I see you chopping wood with an ax, I can do one of two things:

  1) Take the ax from you
  2) Make my own ax based on what I saw

  In case#1, you can rightly say I have violated your property rights, and left you without the use of the ax. In case#2, I have not taken your ax or left you without its use. With respect to your use of the ax I have not left you worse off. You may say that now you may not be able to sell the ax for the price you wanted, since there are now more in circulation (and there is competition), but I don't see in the concept of private property the right to prevent others from using/selling their property as they see fit. You may have worked years on the design and invested many hours and labor on perfecting it, but that is your choice - you were using your labor/money as you wanted, as was your right. The rest of the world doesn't have to bend to your future expectations of profit however.
  If you want to say that this will lead to less inovation, that may or may not be true. But one can always make utilitarian claims by ignoring other factors - if the government took any and all individual wealth above 100k to invest in medical research, I'm sure there would be great advances in that arena. That doesn't justify theft or violation of people's sovereignty. Do you think it does?

  Published: March 4, 2006 2:25 PM

• Win

  You forgot a third option: I can give the ax to you as a gift.

  People's sovereignty includes property ownership. There are debates about what constitutes public domain, but your argument makes no sense if you are advocating an intellectual property free for all.

  
  For those interested in the background of the case, The Globe and Mail does a pretty good job of covering it:

  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060221.wpatentlyabsured-rim21/BNStory/RIM2006/home/?pageRequested=1">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060221.wpatentlyabsured-rim21/BNStory/RIM2006/home/?pageRequested=1">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060221.wpatentlyabsured-rim21/BNStory/RIM2006/home/?pageRequested=1">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060221.wpatentlyabsured-rim21/BNStory/RIM2006/home/?pageRequested=1">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060221.wpatentlyabsured-rim21/BNStory/RIM2006/home/?pageRequested=1

  Published: March 4, 2006 2:51 PM

• Win

  To put a finer point on the issue, there are three ways the one can acquire something:

  1. a gift
  2. purchase, barter, or exchange.
  3. stolen

  One and two fit with the libertarian non-agression axiom. The third does not.

  Where does a libertarian draw the line with respect to number three?

  Published: March 4, 2006 3:02 PM

• Roy W. Wright

  Theft.

  Published: March 4, 2006 4:00 PM

• Not Win

  Win,

  If I hear you say "160481183 is prime" and I write that down, did I "steal" it from you? Does it matter if I didn't know that fact before you said it? If no one knew that fact before you said it? Is "160481183 is prime" no longer in your possession?
  Let's not redefine "stolen" so that it applies to things for which it doesn't make sense, like intellectual "property".

  Besides claims as to future profit potential (which is irrelevant from a right-claiming perspective), what justification is there for claiming that thoughts and things that may arise from application of those thoughts are property?

  Published: March 4, 2006 4:04 PM

• Win

  Not Win,

  If you are advocating an intellectual property free for all, just say it plainly and let the readers comment. Trying to back up your position with an argument that fits clearly in the public domain does not do the argument justice.

  Try arguing that a pharmaceutical firm can invest years and millions of dollars to create a useful drug only to have another firm take it for free or the collected works of your favorite musician be freely shared(Napster) or sampled (Vanilla Ice vs. Queen).

  Is this what you are advocating?

  Published: March 4, 2006 4:21 PM

• Ike Hall

  We've reached an interesting crossroads for intellectual property, and it goes beyond copyright vs patents, or even bits vs atoms. It is nowadays almost impossible to control intellectual property and still make it available to a mass audience or mass market. I'm not certain it makes much sense anymore to try. That said, I do believe that people and/or corporations that bring a product to market should have IP rights in the products themselves. But I do not believe that one has legitimate IP in ideas--memes, if you will. Ideas are passed from mind to mind, not from hand to hand. Despite some corporations' attempt at such mind control (non-disclosure agreements, etc.), ideas cannot be contained entirely in products.

  For example, to permit a pharmaceutical company to own the right to any medicines that prevent blood clotting because they were the first ones to market with a particular drug that prevents such clotting would cause immense damage to innovation in the market. Yet that's the sort of thing that's happening in software and business method patents today. I also think the same thing happens when companies are allowed to patent certain genes--not the drugs developed to take advantage of certain bits of DNA, but the DNA itself. It also happens when companies are allowed to traffic in ideas without actually bringing products to market, as in the Blackberry case.

  As for music, movies, etc., I absolutely agree with copyright and for the producers to make their own terms for the sale and use of the medium. But if they don't wake up to certain realities (the ease of duplication, near-zero cost of additional units, the proliferation of outlets), they are sunk. Not right, but true.

  Published: March 4, 2006 6:48 PM

• Peter

  Win: you really need to read this: mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf

  Published: March 4, 2006 7:19 PM

• Peter

  Damn. Try again

  Published: March 4, 2006 7:22 PM

• Not Win

  Win,

  "Try arguing that a pharmaceutical firm can invest years and millions of dollars to create a useful drug only to have another firm take it for free"

  I like to fancy myself a pragmatic libertarian; there are bad things done in this world, but sometimes you can't remove those bad things overnight without causing even more damage. The pharmaceutical company is acting on certain presumptions, one of which is that any future drugs (and, unfortunately, thousands of other chemical compounds that resemble that drug) will be under their sole legal control for X number of years. If this wasn't the case, they would not likely invest as much money. That doesn't make the artificial construct known as intellectual property valid - it exists, and some entities benefit from it, and many entities act a certain way because of it, but that doesn't mean it's right. Same with Social Security; it's a legal Ponzi scheme, but with millions who depend on it, it would be horrible to remove it tomorrow. Gradual elimination would seem to be the best option. And a gradual elimination of IP laws would both reduce drug company concerns and also eventually get us to a place where government does not grant monopoly access in the market based on bogus claims of property rights.

  Published: March 4, 2006 8:19 PM

• fancyleprachaun

  Win,

  Much is still in play to protect the profitability of products of intellect, sans a statist bureaucracy such as the USPTO and its governmental service of pure thuggery, patents.

  Trade secrets and contract law.

  Both easily apply to your above scenarios, even if the contracts must be agreed to by every customer/recipient, or secret formulas and/or products altered in benign ways to track back to the person(s) originally in breach of the contract.

  Now away with these utilitarian arguments, they interest me little.

  Published: March 4, 2006 8:21 PM

• Ike Hall

  fancyleprechaun points the true way out. The IP rights will have to be negotiated in court and added to the body of law, not legislation. Can IP rights even survive without the State to enforce them?

  Published: March 4, 2006 9:59 PM

• Roy W. Wright

  Of course not. Not in their entirety, at least.

  Published: March 5, 2006 12:32 AM

• sp3tt

  A contract can not apply to a third party, that would indeed be absurd. If A sells a book to B, who agrees to not make copies of it, then how has C, who comes into possession of a copy made by B, committed a crime? C has not agreed to any contract with A.
  Actually, claimning that IP is enforcable by contract implies that IP exists, in which case it should not have to be enforced by contract. In Rothbards famous example, of Black happening to see Brown's mousetrap, Rothbard says Black has no right to manufacture the mousetrap himself, because he cannot acquire a greater property title than did Green, the purcaser of the mousetrap.

  "A common objection runs as follows: all right, it would be criminal for Green to produce and sell the Brown mousetrap; but suppose that someone else, Black, who had not made a contract with Brown, happens to see Green’s mousetrap and then goes ahead and produces and sells the replica? Why should he be prosecuted? The answer is that, as in the case of our critique of negotiable instruments, no one can acquire a greater property title in something than has already been given away or sold. Green did not own the total property right in his mousetrap, in accordance with his contract with Brown—but only all rights except to sell it or a replica. But, therefore Black’s title in the mousetrap, the ownership of the ideas in Black’s head, can be no greater than Green’s, and therefore he too would be a violator of Brown’s property even though he himself had not made the actual contract."

  Clearly, this implies the existence of intellectual property rights.

  As for the pharmaceutical companies, there are two articles by Ilana Mercer on this very subject: Patent Wrongs and Cipro Shortage: An Invented Shortage. However, a principled libertarian has to reject any utilitarian arguments. Capitalism should be implemented not because it produces the most desireable results, but because it is right. Even so, if one tries to defend IP - and especially patents - on utilitarian grounds, one will have a hard time. Just look at this example, or many others. Patents are a monopoly. They do not encourage innovation, they are a threat to it.
  The free-rider argument is invalid. One cannot know which products to rip off, unless one first observes the success of them. And further, even if "ripping off" other companies products were likely to occur: would that not be good? Is it not competition? Does it not create incentive for the innovator to further improve upon his or her product?

  Published: March 5, 2006 4:29 AM

• PR

  Rothbard says Black has no right to manufacture the mousetrap himself, because he cannot acquire a greater property title than did Green, the purcaser of the mousetrap.

  The "right to manufacture" the mousetrap is not a property right at all, except in the context of the agreement between Green and Brown. How could it be, when it is already inherent in the ownership of mousetrap parts? Right to manufacture is not a scarce resource in nature so there is no reason why anyone outside the agreement should recognize it as property. The same method could just as easily be used to claim exclusive ownership of Thursday or the color blue, by the way.

  Published: March 5, 2006 7:28 AM

• Vince Daliessio

  IP is clearly an area of contention for some Misesians, Rothbardians, and other libertarians. Stephan Kinsella, an IP attorney, has written extensively here and elsewhere about the non-existance of any sort of property rights in intangible, non-scarce ideas;

  http://mises.org/daily/1763

  Published: March 5, 2006 9:16 AM

• Vince Daliessio

  Of course, this one (Against Intellectual Property)is a better one;

  http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf

  Published: March 5, 2006 9:57 AM

• averros

  in,

  "Try arguing that a pharmaceutical firm can invest years and millions of dollars to create a useful drug only to have another firm take it for free"

  I will take on that.

  Of course, if there's no patent racket, pharma firms would have little incentive to develop new compounds. Currently they have an incentive to look for drugs which do not cure an illness but, rather, prolong the dependency on the drug (do I need to explain why?)

  But there are parties which (1) pay for the drug development anyway, (2) are interested in controlling and eradication of disease as cheaply and efficiently as possible, (3) have an incentive to cooperate, as cooperative drug development projects bennefit all participants, and (4) have the financial clout to see even large drug-discovery projects through.

  An astute reader may have noticed that those are insurance companies. They pay to the pharma companies for drugs, and part of those payments is used by pharma companies to develop drugs for their own exclusive manufacture.

  There is absolutely no reason for pharma companies to be in the business of drug discovery. This is better done on a per-project basis, by ad-hoc groups (and, in fact, that's what is happening anyway). So those groups can be run as non-profits, funded by the self-interested insurance companies, and pharma companies can compete on quality, price and generally keep the manufacturing know-how to themselves, while drug formulas are public-domain. (In fact, there's an incentive for pharmas to pitch in with the drug discovery efforts in exchange to access to the scientists' know-how).

  This IP-free arrangement is way superior to the current drug development cycle, in that it favours development of those drugs which have a potential to reduce overall cost the illnesses impose on the society -- and not the development of lifestyle frivolities like Viagra. It also does not have other well-known defects of the current system - neglect of unpatentable remedies such as traditional medicines, and the tendency to produce marginally improved (but patentable) drugs which provide little benefits to the patients, but allow pharma companies to fend off generic drug manufacturers.

  Now, if we also abolish FDA with its idotic and awfully costly process of drug "approval" (which, incidentally, makes a lot of drugs well-established in other parts of the world inaccessible to US patients), and let the insurance companies to commission research on quality, safety, and efficacy of the drugs they cover in their policies -- we have the recipe for reversing the health costs disaster *and* improving medical care quality and accessibility tremendously.

  So, health care is, in fact, a perfect example why intellectual property is not only wrong, but is outright criminal - because of it millions of people suffer and die needlessly.

  Published: March 6, 2006 1:32 AM

• Artisan

  The IP theme really is the most interesting and controversial of all libertarian themes (opinion). Not from a utilitarian point of view naturally. I must do more research about this... yet already now, Averros mentioning the role of insurance companies in the "ideal libertarian world" seems to echo Robert Murphy ideas with tremendous utilitarian importance.
  Maybe this ought to be stressed out more in order to convince more people? (The greatest reasons why people are NOT convinced by libertarian ideas are of utilitarian kind).
  Government in this analysis just seems to be a fancy word for "monopoly of the insurance business"… is this right?
  

  Published: March 6, 2006 12:04 PM

• Artisan

  However, as I pointed out to my friend Paul D. some time ago, Mr. Kinsella’s argumentation on the subject shows major flaws though, which is why I wouldn’t want to rely on it as a reference on the matter…

  I’m not interested in IP at this point. I am considering just the copyright.
  This report from Mr. Kinsella simply isn’t a convincing stand from a libertarian point of view as it is now: It really doesn’t help the libertarian cause.

  Obviously it is not a lack of intelligence of the author, nor of his humour (see the examples of stupid patents towards the end), yet some reasoning just doesn’t seem quite fair in that piece: for instance, when Mr. Kinsella brilliantly distinguishes at first between some differences fundamental to copyright and patent protection…to only treat them as a bundle later on, and confuse them at will all the way till the end... I suspect here, Mr. Kinsella doesn’t care too much about artistic creation.

  In a way, artistic copyright is the contrary of patent. It is based on the uniqueness (identity) of a creation without a purpose. Its sole purpose is the uniqueness you could say.
  The purpose of a patent is the multiple use… but as I said, patent doesn’t interest me for the moment. There’s enough specificity for both concepts not to treat them in one blow.

  More important: some basic arguments speak against the theory of scarcity as it is stated by Mr. Kinsella to build the argumentation core against copyright.
  

  Published: March 6, 2006 4:13 PM

• quincunx

  Patents do not encourage innovation - they encourage people to obtain patents.

  Taking the pharmaceutical example above, what if one company A invests millions of dollars into a drug, but is beaten by a few hours or days by company B who has also invested millions of dollars. Is it not arbitrary to say that only one of these firms should be entitled to an X-year monopoly? The patent system creates race competition in churning out broad and meaningless patents - just so that they can be registered first. This does not spur innovation, but rather hinders it.

  It has been said that the industrial revolution did not begin until the patents of James Watt had expired. So, even as early as 1760 - people had doubts about the new copyright/patent system introduced in England in 1710.

  Published: March 6, 2006 6:17 PM

• Artisan

  copyright/patent !? Either you're talking about the one, or the other.

  Published: March 7, 2006 2:06 AM

• quincunx

  While my emphasis is on patents. But they both appeared at the same time, historically.

  Published: March 7, 2006 2:56 PM

• Artisan

  Maybe, yet it is irrelevant to your point except if you would explain how copyright abolition "frees" creativity.

  Published: March 7, 2006 5:45 PM

• quincunx

  Then why comment on the fact that it is irrelevant to my point? That seems irrelevant. But I'll say something, anyway.

  First of all, there is no need to have a monopoly copyright enforcer - it can be handled by private contract.

  Second, it is fraud to put your name under some one's work and sell it as if it was yours. This too can be mitigated by private contracts between you and your publisher, as well as betwen publishers.

  Some background to the development of copyright law is here:
  http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/chunter/copyright_and_culture.html

  The motivation for it was not to protect the "lowly author".

  Published: March 7, 2006 7:48 PM

• Artisan

  Quite an interesting article on history here. Thanks.
  I commented on the irrelevance of linking copyright to patent in every argumentation though, as the post above yours already explained... (maybe someone did read it and did not find that completely irrelevant?)

  Published: March 9, 2006 4:28 AM

• Moshe

  Patents are the most capitalistic thing ever created - they give incentive to smart people to work hard to create things and then to monetize those things.
  Without patent protection, free riders who have invented nothing but have the resources to copy can do so. No financial reward to smart people to invent - so smart people do not invent and the world loses.

  No patents -- no Thomas Edison.
  No patents -- no Alexander Bell.
  No patents -- no Wright Brothers.
  You get the idea - without the patent system, these inventors would not have invested the 'perspiration' to create the technology that benefits all.
  MY QUESTION TO ALL THOSE WHO ATTACKED PATENTS - have you ever invented something personally?
  I doubt it. If you did, you wouldn't be so freely appropriating other people's IP rights.

  Published: March 15, 2006 3:58 PM

• quincunx

  " they give incentive to smart people to work hard to create things and then to monetize those things."

  No, they give the incentives to CREATE PATENTS, not necessarily usefull inventions.

  "Without patent protection, free riders who have invented nothing but have the resources to copy can do so."

  How can they do so? You act as if you need a monopolistic first-come-first-serve or most-pay-first-serve agency is the only way to protect your work.

  You neglect the problem of people getting stupid, non-sensical, and broad patents.

  You neglect the use of such patents to have one sit on their duff waiting for a productive organization unknowingly use it, and then near expiration suing their pants off for millions of dollars. Can you say extortion?

  "No patents -- no Thomas Edison.
  No patents -- no Alexander Bell.
  No patents -- no Wright Brothers."

  Their purpose of birth is to crank out patents? We need a patent system to have famous patenters?

  Alexander Bell DID not invent the telephone. He perfected from a German man: Reiss. Elisha Gray was outbeat by Bell in getting the patent out first. Bell's real success came about because he was an entrepreneur with monopoly priveledge. You need to set up a race in order to have progress?

  "No patents -- no Wright Brothers."

  Their goal in life was to have a patent? or to fly? Did they make any money off it? NO. It's not like they invented flight. Flight was fascination ever since the hot air balloon.

  "No patents -- no Thomas Edison."

  Did all his 1000+ patents go into marketable products? Do you think the patents themselves made him wealth? NO. He was both an inventor and an entrepreneur with a privledge.

  "these inventors would not have invested the 'perspiration' to create the technology that benefits all."

  They didn't invent the technology because of the patents. They invented them because it satisfied their curiocity - also without being in a rush to create a patent, they would have decided to invest resources and be a market leader by ACTUALLY selling goods and services. How about the inventors abroad that didn't have a patent system? They certainly had many great contributions. How did some 'inventors' here thank them? By patenting their stuff here!

  "MY QUESTION TO ALL THOSE WHO ATTACKED PATENTS - have you ever invented something personally?"

  YES & YES.

  YES 1. Real Invention: 1. I just don't see a reason to use violence to prevent someone else from independently coming up with the same idea, gathering resources, and spreading it out to the rest.

  YES 2. Patent: I have had at 4 ideas that can be patented. I have looked around, and consulted with a patent lawyer (friend). I have invested absolutely NO resources other than making formal notes (100+ hours labor) in my notebook. I do not intend to, for the moment, invest my energy into creating a start-up based on these ideas. Now tell me how it would be moral for me to prevent someone else from doing the same?

  " I doubt it. If you did, you wouldn't be so freely appropriating other people's IP rights."

  Immoral rights (right to someone else's ability in pursuing their own interest - even if coinciding with that of mine) are no rights...plain and simple.

  Published: March 15, 2006 7:24 PM

• averros

  MY QUESTION TO ALL THOSE WHO ATTACKED PATENTS - have you ever invented something personally?

  I have several US & international patents in my name (though they're owned by the corporations I worked for).

  Well, all my gain from them was on the order of $1000 in company's bonus money.

  Someone who actually invented something isn't likely to gather profits from the invention. Anyone who claims that patents somehow stimulate inventors obviously have zero clue on how it works in the real life.

  As soon as I realized that, I stopped wasting my time on patenting and started looking for business models not dependent on the "Intellectual Property".

  Published: March 15, 2006 9:57 PM

• Moshe

  TO quincunx and averros:

  (I responded as if their posts were from one user and just noticed now that that isn't the case- my mistake - I apologize).

  Please read - looks like I am the only pro-patent poster on this board.

  YOU WROTE:
  business models not dependent on the "Intellectual Property".
  I RESPOND:
  I assume this business model is advertising and marketing, NOT innovating, because if everything you innovate is immediately copied by your competitors, you get no business advantage by innovating (except for technologies taht are hard to copy, but nowadays, many many things are trivially copied)..
  YOU WROTE: They invented them because it satisfied their curiocity.
  I RESPOND: inventing technology takes MONEY. (I am a PhD scientist - I know). nobody is going to lay out the money if there is no return - at least I would never invest money to satisfy somebody else's intellectual curiousity. people need money to "pay the bills" while they are inventing - otherwise, they will ahvew to spend their whole day in advertising and marketing according to your model.
  In fact, the ONLY innovation funded for curiousity is GOVERNMENT-FUNDED science and NOT in the private sector - like in the USSR where they had "science centers for excellence" and then kept the science secret - (YES, I know this is a generalization, but the tendency is DEFINITELY true). SO you are proposing either A) less innovation B) more gov't taxes to fund "curiousity innovation"
  YOU WROTE: "You neglect the problem of people getting stupid, non-sensical, and broad patents."
  I RESPOND: If the patent is erronesouly issued, I agree 100%. but this has nothing to do with GOOD patents.
  as a side note, many times ignoramuses who know nothing of patent law read the "title" of the patent, and the "abstract" and assume the patnet is "stupid and obvious" without expending the effort to read the CLAIMS, which is what issued. the CLAIMS must be novel and non-obvious - NOT the title.
  if you complain that patents are written in such as way as to obfuscate the invention, I agree 100% that this is a problem, and the fault is the court system in this country, which will screw inventors who come out and say what they invented by "reading in a limitation." this forces patent agents and attorneys to write in a terrible un-clear writing style to protect their clients.

  ABOUT BROAD CLAIMS - there are many smart people in this world, and in many fields, a claim more narrow than a broad claim is WORTHLESS, since smart people can just trivially "go around" this narrow claim - if the claim is worthless, it is like having no patent whatsoever. I DO agree that if there is prior art, issuing a broad claim is an ERROR.

  YOU WROTE:
  I have invested absolutely NO resources other than making formal notes (100+ hours labor) in my notebook. I do not intend to, for the moment, invest my energy into creating a start-up based on these ideas. Now tell me how it would be moral for me to prevent someone else from doing the same?
  I RESPOND: meanwhile, these ideas are secrets. if you are so generous and altruistic, why don't you disclose these ideas for free !!! you won't, because there is no financial motivation to do so !! meanwhile, while you do not prevent someone from implementing your idea, the state of the art does not progress because noone knows of your brilliant ideas - the world is deprived of the opportunity to "stand on the shoulders of giants" (assuming that you are a giant and your ideas are worthy of giants). and if your idea is "trivial", either A) a patent should not be granted if it is obvious or non-novel B) if the idea is stupid AND non-obvious AND novel, the world does not loose from being deprived the opportunity to do something stupid.
  YOU WROTE: "I just don't see a reason to use violence to prevent someone else from independently coming up with the same idea, gathering resources, and spreading it out to the rest."
  I RESPOND: this is absurd. the $$$ in your bank account could do a LOT of good (or gold under your mattress or whatever ideology you people follow), and we all agree the state should use violence to prevent someone from expropriating this, and spreading it around.

  Look forward to being flamed.

  Cheers,
  Moshe

  Published: March 16, 2006 1:07 AM

• Peter

  Moshe: there's no point flaming you; you obviously aren't aware of the work on this subject. Read Kinsella, etc. If you still disagree, come back with sensible arguments that don't show a complete lack of familiarity with his work (among others), then get flamed :)

  Published: March 16, 2006 4:23 AM

• Ryan Fuller

  Some people just aren't worth the effort to properly flame them.

  Published: March 16, 2006 4:40 AM

• Moshe

  my my, aren't we arrogant.
  yes i read kinsella's word.
  especially the point "Other costs can also be noted. Companies pay patent attorney salaries, patent filing and maintenance fees, and significant litigation costs (it can easily cost over a million dollars to defend from a patent infringement lawsuit, even if you win), as well as higher insurance premiums due to the risk of being involved in patent infringement litigation."
  MY RESPONSE: patent attorney fees are the way for innovators to protect their innovations. in the absence of a legal system to protect their innovations, companies are forced to turn to advertising and marketing campaigns. after all, in my MBA class we learned "marketing is everything."
  the cost of obtaining a patent is a few thousand dollars.
  does ANYONE know the cost of a marketing campaign? a LOT more than that.
  entities that do not have access to marketing campaigns have either a) no incentive to innovate b) no incentive NOT to keep this innovation secret.
  and despite what bill gates will try to teach you, the most valuable breakthroughs HAVE been provided by "small entities" - the little guy who invents the disruptive technology.
  so if the argument is that resources are diverted from "pure innovation," it seems that this argument is quite incorrect.
  and even if this is the case (which it ISN'T), it does not justify denying the innovators the fruits of their innovations.

  Published: March 16, 2006 10:14 AM

• quincunx

  "I RESPOND: this is absurd. the $$$ in your bank account could do a LOT of good (or gold under your mattress or whatever ideology you people follow), and we all agree the state should use violence to prevent someone from expropriating this, and spreading it around."

  Uhm, do you understand what property is? The $$$ in my bank account is my $$$. NO OTHER PERSON CAN HAVE IT. An idea is something that two or more people can have! Furthermore, I don't know where you get this "we" business when referring to state violence.

  "I RESPOND: meanwhile, these ideas are secrets. if you are so generous and altruistic, why don't you disclose these ideas for free !!! you won't, because there is no financial motivation to do so !! meanwhile, while you do not prevent someone from implementing your idea, the state of the art does not progress because no one knows of your brilliant ideas"

  That's interesting, because you've made the assumption that ALREADY no one else has this idea. Do you check the patent system every time to see if a new innovation has already been described?

  "I RESPOND: If the patent is erronesouly issued, I agree 100%. but this has nothing to do with GOOD patents."

  This is similar to "other governments are bad, ours is good".

  " the most valuable breakthroughs HAVE been provided by "small entities" - the little guy who invents the disruptive technology.
  so if the argument is that resources are diverted from "pure innovation," it seems that this argument is quite incorrect.
  and even if this is the case (which it ISN'T), it does not justify denying the innovators the fruits of their innovations.".

  Innovator A and B are innovating and they both come up with the same invention. A lives in California, B lives in Virginia. A and B send out their forms at exactly the same time - B wins. B deserves the fruits of his labor. A is forever prevented from doing anything with his idea. B is a giant among men. B can now sell or license his idea to an entrepreneur, or become an entrepreneur himself. Does this impress you?

  Ahh, but it is more complicated than that. They don't know for a certain amount of time (2 years or so?) whether their patent went through. Both A & B might think that their idea is the only one out there. Both might invest money into production. Now what if A really gets into production and starts mass producing. Maybe he even gets a substantial market presence. In 2 years it will known to B that he got the patent first. Will he sue A? NO! If he's got any smarts he will wait to sue A at his peak market presence.

  And there you have it: The Patent System is one large Broken Window Fallacy.

  Published: March 17, 2006 10:07 PM

• paul

  You cannot patent an idea but today it's possible to make an actual "working" model of a system via certain software tools in specific engineering disciplines. Thus it can be tested before a physical prototype is built. You can check it out for yourself.

  Published: October 31, 2007 2:09 AM

• Kevin B

  Moshe: "I assume this business model is advertising and marketing, NOT innovating, because if everything you innovate is immediately copied by your competitors, you get no business advantage by innovating (except for technologies taht are hard to copy, but nowadays, many many things are trivially copied)."

  New ideas in advertising and marketing are copied rather quickly. This hasn't prevented the advertising firm that I work for from coming up with new marketing ideas and turning a profit.

  Published: October 31, 2007 11:47 AM

• Kevin B

  Just in case this needs to be pointed out, marketing is a very broad category and includes an innovative aspect, else new ideas would be pointless.

  Published: October 31, 2007 11:51 AM