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Reason on IP Protection and Creativity
rnturn writes "A long but interesting article over at Reasononline discusses a paper written by a pair of economists and published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (!) and the reactions to it of several other economists. A snippet from the article: 'Moreover, U.S. court decisions in the 1980s that strengthened patent protection for software led to less innovation. "Far from unleashing a flurry of new innovative activity," Maskin and Bessen write, "these stronger property rights ushered in a period of stagnant, if not declining, R&D among those industries and firms that patented most."' Not exactly news to most readers but it appears that their paper is making waves in economic circles."
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Boldrin and Levine's original paper is available here (pdf).
"...it appears that their paper is making waves in economic circles."
I'm extremely happy to hear this. You can't imagine how upset the issue about patents makes me when I keep hearing about more protection, stronger laws, another lawsuit against infringement, another idiotic patent issued, and more power to the large coporations that in reality due some of the least amount of innovation, especially considering their size, power, and wealth. Good to see the issue finally coming out besides just in court suppressing the little guy. I read most of the paper a few days ago, well said, and its good to see such a long article discussing the issue on Reason.com. I must say that the issue scares a lot of people. It is because the elimination of such strong laws giving an individual or corporation ownership of an idea would in effect help bridge the gap between rich and poor. Scary isn't it? The idea would also cause a major shift in economic structure in various industries that have relied on using intellectual property as a means of profit or part of their business. Like on the front of "Programming Perl" says, "There is more than one way to do it." Yes, the current system works, but how well? Does the constant threat of piracy and increase in spending to fight it a sign of an efficient system. I sure don't think so.
Question everything.
That's because it's danish.
"There are cars on the street tonight".
(Yes, he was pulling your leg, how sad for him that a former enemy (I'm from Sweden) exposed his nefarious plans! =)
"GNU's not Unix....it's Linux" / Kami "kokamomi" Petersen
It's not French but Danish - well, at least the *words* are Danish. a literal translation is; "There are cars on the stripe tonight". And no, it makes almost no sense in Danish either...
First off, IBM, Microsoft, and Sun are too large precicely because of intellectual property. I saw this happen once when I was working at a fab-facuility. It was bought out, and pretty much shut down, not because it couldn't make a good profit, but because the buyer bought it to corner a strategic market using its patent holdings. Second off, if you and everyone else loose say a million worth of IP, but in return gain access to a trillion worth of IP - then this is not a net loss for anyone. In fact, it would likely create an innovation and business explosion.
FWIW, you can find more of Levin's work at various places. Prof. Danny Quah also has some thoughts on the subject.
"He wrested the world's whereabouts from the heavens And locked the secret in a pocketwatch." - Dava Sobel