The Russian playwright and short story writer characterized his rule of parsimony in drama like this:
Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.
Why isn’t there such a rule governing opinion writing? The title of Gus Van Horn’s RealClearMarkets piece is “In Defense of a Strong U.S. Patent System”. Nowhere in the piece were there any hints of what he thought a strong patent system would look like.
I can tell you what my idea of a good patent system indeed any system of intellectual property would be. It would have the following characteristics:
- Patents would be of short duration.
- They would not be extendable including by the Congress.
- They would be rigorously enforceable without regard to the patent-holder’s ability to pay.
I once heard Dean Kamen speak. His advice to would-be inventors was don’t invent anything big or important until you’re rich enough to defend it from big companies. They’ll infringe your patent at will and have the legal firepower to withstand attacks from upstarts.
