In his regular Washington Post column Robert Samuelson enters the lists on the side of patent holders:
There is much to dislike in President Trump’s trade agenda, but he is correct on one subject: China’s relentless quest to extort American “intellectual property†— technologies, business methods, patents. Trump took a swipe last week at China’s policies by ordering his top trade officials to investigate. Whether he can alter China’s behavior is unclear, but he is right to try, even at the risk of a trade war.
I have thought and continue to think that U. S. reliance on intellectual property has been an error on several grounds. Too much of the world for practical purposes rejects the very idea of intellectual property and lacks the civil infrastructure to secure intellectual property rights. In about two thirds of the world’s land area, a DVD store is a place where DVDs are copied for sale. Also, it’s a contributing factor to income inequality, granting a benefit to the owners of intellectual property rather than their creators or people who make physical things.
I understand the pragmatic argument for the idea of intellectual property rights. I find the moral and philosophical argument in favor of such rights tenuous at best. If someone has a lengthy, residual right to deriving revenue from their work, why doesn’t that apply equally to people who make objects rather than ideas? I think the reasons are practical rather than philosophical and I think that the absence of such rights from the U. S. Constitution suggest that the Founding Fathers thought so, too.
” If someone has a lengthy, residual right to deriving revenue from their work, why doesn’t that apply equally to people who make objects rather than ideas? ”
You may call this practical. I’d call it philosophical. There is no other way to receive remuneration for your patented technical aspect or aesthetic design than IP. If I’m a manufacturer I combine labor and capital to sell products at whatever profit my skillfullness in that regard can command in the marketplace. If I am labor I contract for a wage for my labor. If capital I charge for use and risk of it. If I’m an IP creator I…………… Well, I charge for use of my IP. What else, philosophically or practically, do I have? Without that, IP development would grind to a halt.
Are you sure your beef isn’t with the magnitude and duration?
Worth remembering that two centuries ago the US was a notorious copyright offender, routinely reprinting British authors without paying royalties or even asking for permission. Charles Dickens tried to explain the iniquities of the situation when he first toured the United States, and completely failed to convince anyone — the general attitude of Americans was that we were doing foreign authors an honor in finding their work worthy of reprinting and that they should be satisfied by their fame rather than money. Dicken’s travel memoire was somewhat sarcastically entitled: American Notes, For General Circulation.
Sure there is. You get paid for doing it.
People would do things because the problems exist, because they want to do them for reasons other than royalties, and because they can receive compensation as long as they’re protected by trade secret. Would it slow some research? Yes, throwing money at something beyond the market clearing price produces a glut. The evidence that the money being thrown at some areas of research is actually producing results is meager. What patents and royalties actually do is encourage the distribution of created works, something that used to be expensive. It isn’t expensive any more and we should stop subsidizing distribution.
The present duration of copyright along with the ability to extend the term of a copyright indefinitely is an outrage. It’s an end-run around the Constitution.
All of these are practical reasons not philosophical ones. You can make the same argument that auto workers should receive lifetime royalties for making cars or that your plumber should receive a royalty as long as your toilets flush.
I was hoping, as you like to say, “draw you out.”
I think that “you get paid for it” is an oversimplified and salarymans perspective. High risk endeavors that have all or nothing aspects typically have equity oriented compensation that reflects that risk profile. For example, an investment fund pays off, in round numbers, once every 10 years…….or it doesn’t. People or organizations wouldn’t, and don’t, do that for the salary of been, say, a doctor. They wouldn’t, and don’t, accept time based compensation out of intellectual curiosity about “problems that exist.” That’s a philosophical difference in compensation schemes.
I’m much more agnostic about term. What is “correct” I don’t know. It’s probably very situational. I do know all contractual arrangements should have a finite term.
BTW – you invoked copyrights. I’m much more oriented towards patents and industrial design IP.
The US Constitution has the right idea, but it needs to be adjusted.
New drugs require approval by the FDA, and personally, I would rather more testing than less. A short patent time could allow the patent to expire before the testing is complete.
A lot of software patents are either trivial or prior knowledge.
Requiring patents to be used would help, but it would need to accommodate testing or other requirements that would prohibit it. To prevent delaying the testing, there would need to be a requirement defining a timely period.
As I understand it, the Constitution intended to protect the individual from larger companies, but that has been ‘turned on its head’.