Patents: intellectual monopolies

[Collin Li]

Patents are a government sanctioned intellectual monopoly. The incentive of having a monopoly is supposed to drive people to do research. The justification for this is that intellectual discoveries are beneficial to the human race, so that the government should make an intervention. This comes at a cost however, it means that there is intellectual property that is unlimited in nature (an idea can be given to someone, and you still have the idea), but it's utilisation is restricted because the patent owner has a price on the information.

There are plenty of sites that are in support of intellectual property - you can look them up yourself. I am neutral on it, so I would like to share this site, which is against the status quo (against intellectual monopoly).

http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm

An excerpt:

As a matter of theory, intellectual monopoly appears unnecessary. As a matter of fact, we have seen numerous examples showing the frenetic pace of creation in the absence of copyright. As the theory suggests, creations such as literature, music, movies, and news thrive in the absence of copyright. So perhaps copyright is not such a good idea. However, while we may hope to live lives free of boredom in the absence of intellectual monopoly – what about invention, the driving force of economic growth and prosperity? Would we benefit from all of the marvelous machines, drugs and ideas we are surrounded with if not for the beneficent force of patent law? Can we risk the foundation of our prosperity and growth by eliminating patents? Guess what – we are going to argue that without patents we would have more, not less, marvelous machines and inventions. We are going to observe that patent law is largely the unwelcome consequence of competitive innovation and poor legislation, and not the source of innovation at all.

[excal]

This is quite a general statement, but do you see a correaltion between the formation of intelluctual property laws and the number of R&D achievements and inventions?

In the pharmaceutical industry, for example, some companies won't do research into what are known as 'orphan drugs' because the amount of research (and risk of the promising drug being a total failure is high) might not mitigate the costs even within the IP law structure. Thus, further government intervention is required to give incentive for these companies to do research on these drugs. I assume the governement would justify this action to allow development of drugs that can treat currently untreatable or hard-to-treat disorders.

I would say, personally, that IP law is a very important area of law. However, it does need a little shake up to mitigate the problem of patent trolls (a general definition: companies who aggressively acquire patents, and litigate to earn damages).

[Collin Li]

I have not read the link I provided yet, but the excerpt I posted suggests that it has an argument against the claim that IP law gives us more R&D achievements and inventions.

Guess what – we are going to argue that without patents we would have more, not less, marvelous machines and inventions.

I am not going to post any arguments until I have read it, though.