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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).
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.
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.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Is mindblowing to the average person. This is the sort of paper that really needs to be distributed as much as possible (but rewritten to be understandable to the layman), because there really needs to be a great deal of political support for such an exemption from the patent process here. The biggest problem is that the software industry has already defined a piece of software as a patentable product, similar to a car or a monitor, and the general populace believes that to be true. However, you don't make a new car by tearing out the carburetor of a 1995 Ford, clean it up, add a couple parts from a 2002 Chevy to it, and stick it into your new car. However, that is precisely how software is generally made. There's your layman's explanation right there.
-1 disinformative for you there.
Sweden has never been socialist. It has, during nearly all of the previous century, followed a policy of the "Middle Path" choosing the elements from the free market where they are best applied and elements from socialism where they are best applied.
Nowadays it is following a Bush/ Bliar/Thatcher-style neoliberalism with heavy emphasis on buracracy, privatization and corporate welfare.
Go look at the statistics. During the years Sweden prospered economically, had low debt or a surplus, had good services such as health care, low unemployment, it was during the periods of closest adherence to the middle path. Look at the times where services are few and of poor quality, the budget is in shambles, lots of debt and high unemployment, it is during times when deviation from the middle path has been strongest -- such as the last 15 years.
The Swedish banks are the worst examples of failure of unrestrained capitalism. They have collapsed and been bailed out twice. However, normally when one buys out the debt from a failed company, the buyer then owns the company. Stupidly in the last case, the buyer (the Swedish government) simply handed the banks back to the same asshats that bankrupted them in the first places. These are the clowns that then pick the recipients for the Swedish Bank's Prize in Memory of Alfred Nobel. To try to lend credibility to their scam they, to their credit, have schmoozed into the Nobel celebration. However, the Swedish Bank's Prize in Memory of Alfred Nobel is to the Nobel Prize what films like Ernest in the Army is to fine cinema.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.