Critic of Software Patents Wins Nobel Prize in Economics

doom writes "You've probably already heard that the Nobel Prize for Economics was given to three gents who were working on advances in mechanism design theory. What you may not have heard is what one of those recipients was using that theory to study: 'One recent subject of Professor Maskin's wide-ranging research has been on the value of software patents. He determined that software was a market where innovations tended to be sequential, in that they were built closely on the work of predecessors, and innovators could take many different paths to the same goal. In such markets, he said, patents might serve as a wall that inhibited innovation rather than stimulating progress.' Here's one of Maskin's papers on the subject: Sequential Innovation, Patents, limitation (pdf).

Comments

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[mmcuh]

Seconded. The Nobel Prize in Economics is NOT a real Nobel, and is awarded by the socialist Swedish central bank. Their awards are biased.

Honestly any economist who doesn't recognize the value of creating and protecting intellectual property rights in an information economy is a POORLY trained economist. Hernando de Soto has pegged a lack of real property rights as the primary issue that prevents wealth from being created in the third world (agricultural economies).

You do realise that property rights have absolutely nothing to do with "intellectual property"? One says that you are not allowed to steal other people's things, the other says that you are not allowed to create certain things if someone else created it first. Property rights is a rather obvious concept derived from the simple fact that if you take something from someone else, they lose it. "Intellectual property" is a government-sanctioned privately owned monopoly that prevents other people from creating something identical to what you have, or in some cases even just slightly similar.

As government-awarded private monopolies, "intellectual properties" are artificial barriers for the free market and thus you can certainly be opposed to them without being a "socialist".

That said, I doubt the Bank of Sweden knew about Maskin's patent critique, or if they did, that they cared about it. They gave him a prize for some neat theoretical work.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[timster]

That's partially because, despite what the people posting here would have you believe, the economics prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences -- the same organization that awards the prizes in physics and chemistry. It was established and funded by a grant from the Swedish central bank, but the bank does NOT determine the laureates.