I can see both sides to this debate. On the one hand, patents provide an incentive to a company who is involved in research and development. What good is researching an area if you are not free to gain the maximum profit from doing so?
On the other hand, I can see patents as little more than government enforced monopolies. Patents [potentially] reduce choice in the market. For example, suppose company A and B are in direct competition in one product area. A and B are initially using the same method of working in their products, meaning competition between the two companies is high. A researches and gets a patent on a better method, which it implements. A’s gadget now performs better than B’s gadget, perhaps considerably so, which attracts customers from B to A. A capitalises on this by hiking up the price, reducing the quality and perhaps adding some nasty stuff (i.e. spyware) to its product. The choice is now between a slow inefficient product without the nasties, or an efficient product at a high price. The patent has shifted the focus of competition from the quality of build of the product and it’s price to who has the “faster” product.
I hope that makes sense
So, libertarians, are patents little more than government enforced monopolies, or are they vital to a healthy market?
They ARE government enforced monopolies. But I don’t necessarily think that’s bad.
Though I would limit the term pretty severely. I like and support an inventor profiting on his work but one good one shouldn’t mean that a bright person can coast forever.
Without patents, the only way a person has to protect his intellectual property is secrecy. And then other people can’t build on the work. So patents are a good thing.
There’s nothing anti-libertarian about them, either. They’re just a way to describe and register property so that other people don’t steal it. The same with copyrights.
The real dilemma comes in when you try to determine the limits of that property, and when intellecctual information should revert into the public domain. Because clearly, ideas get replicated, and if you extend patents too far you do give people a monopoly on ideas simply for having gotten there first. Hence the traditional 17 year patent limitation. You get a reasonable time to profit from your work, but then it becomes public domain. I have no problem with that.
Copyright is becoming a problem, because the traditional definition of a copyright lasting X years after the creator’s death doesn’t fit well into the corporate world, where copyrights are held by perpetual entities.
Ayn Rand liked patents, and I’m a little hard-pressed to imagine the tortured logic by which a libertarian (or anyone else who wasn’t a communist or wannabe communist) could argue that an inventor shouldn’t have some degree of control over or a chance to personally benefit from his creation.
Just a note, but Ayn Rand and Objectivists are against Libertarianism on the basis that its beliefs are founded on feelings rather than logic. Cite. Just because you seemed to be linking the two.
Exactly. Only the really fanatical want zero government interaction with the market. This is a case where a little government action is desirable…protecting intellectual property is a GOOD thing, and it stimulates the market as Sam pointed out.
I certainly don’t think patents should be forever, but everybody’s doing it. Meaning everybody’s trying to invent something, because they hope to cash in. That’s probably not a bad thing most of the time, since rarely do human beings collectively go out of their way to produce wonderful inventions with no expation for reward but the warm fuzzies.
There is something to be said, though, for coming up with a better definition of “invention” in many instances. People might have more respect for patents in general if some of the patents weren’t so unrespectable.
Oh, and so as to nots veer completely off topic, isn’t property of the intellectual sort still property? And don’t Libertarian’s feel a legitimate function of govt. is to protect property rights?
I doubt you’d find many of us arguing against it. Most of the ‘IP is crap’ argument comes from folks interested in getting something for nothing and self-justifying.
I agree with Sam Stone; its not a question of should patents exist, but what are the limits of patent protections.
Individualist and free marketeer that I am, personally I think theres been a trend of extending patent protections in ways I think to be too far in the holders favor. Im not in favor of patents on discoveries of organic systems/matter, such as DNA sequences (note the organic). I think that as well as the limits of patent protection itself when it applies, we need to straighten out exactly what can/cant be patented in the first place. Especially in the areas known as intellectual property lately more often than not, in my opinion, I think patent holders rights have either been extended too far or never should have been granted in the first place.
When you sell something, when you ask for and accept money, you give something up in return. Perhaps we are just being faced with a slight shift in the definitions of words; maybe ‘purchase’ is slowly losing its sense of a transfer of ownership to the purchaser, and instead also being applied to what are in effect leases and rentals. Maybe, with increased protections for some things, we should also have labels alerting the consumer to the fact that the purchase price is of the lease or rental, and not the actual ownership, of the product.
American law now says that copyrights held by corporations last 95 years.
The U.S. Constitution (I’m aware that copyright law in other countries can vary greatly) says that copyrights are to be for a limited time and that the purpose of copyright is to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” There’s nothing defining an intellectual property right - when it talks about the rights of the authors and inventors, these are only means to the end of promoting the arts and sciences.
What many people have a problem with is how the copyright terms keep getting extended and retroactively applied to works that have already been created. Extending the term of existing copyrights inhibits the arts and sciences, because it forces people to pay for things that would have been free had the original copyright been allowed to expire. This is simply taking money from users of copyrights and giving it to holders of copyrights. There is no public benefit. It does not encourage authors and inventors, because the work has already been done.
No. “Intellectual property” is simply shorthand for “trademarks, patents, and copyrights”. Sometimes the term is used for convenience; other times, it’s used for deception, to justify ever-stronger enforcement of these laws (and ever-increasing copyright lengths) by making misleading comparisons to the real kind of property.
I consider myself a liberal libertarian (small L), and a key part of what I’ve always understood “property” to mean is that it’s inherently scarce. A piece of property can only be in one place at a time; if I’m driving my car to Chicago, you can’t drive it to Seattle simultaneously. If you could, I’d have no reason to prevent you from doing so, because it wouldn’t infringe on my rights. I have a right to do whatever I want with my property, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else–I can drive the car whenever I want, set it on fire, or offer it for sale–but I don’t have the right to deny everyone else from having their own car, even if it’d make them more likely to buy the one I’m trying to sell.
As for patents, I consider them valuable despite my principles, not because of them… mainly as an incentive for inventors to make their inventions public. As Sam Stone said, the alternative is secrecy - of course, I’d prefer that people release their inventions without the government needing to limit my actions to protect them, but that’s human nature for you. I do think the scope of patent protection (i.e. the range of actions I’m prohibited from doing with a patented idea) needs to be more limited, though.
Never, because in 2023, when the copyright is about to expire, Disney will purchase 777 beautiful virgins to orally satisfy each Congressman in exchange for another 20-year extension.
Funny how “helping the market” doesn’t translate into social welfare policy helping people or labor policy “helping labor markets”, etc. I think some serious research by Congress needs to be done on what it really costs to invent new drugs. Perhaps then a patent should cover a certain FEW years and then continue only until it has generated profits for the holder that exceeds 100% of the original research costs, or something. In addition, any government or nonprofit (since partially publicly funded through tax law) contribution to the research should be deducted or considered when granting the length of the patent.
RE: Secrecy. Actually, patents can make secrecy a problem. Firms might buy up patents or file patents just to sit on information and inventions. Pharm companies often come out with an improved version of their big winning drug right around when that drug’s patent expires.
But you can’t “sit on information” if it’s patented. Patents are public. The monopoly a patent holder has is on using the information in the real world, not possessing it or explaining it to others.
At least, that’s my understanding. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me can explain better.
