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How Intellectual Property Reinforces Inequality
An anonymous reader writes "Here is an article by Dr.Joe Stiglitz on how intellectual property reinforces inequality by allowing patent owners to seek rent (aka license / sue) instead of delivering goods to the society. From the article: 'At first glance, the case, Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, might seem like scientific arcana: the court ruled, unanimously, that human genes cannot be patented, though synthetic DNA, created in the laboratory, can be. But the real stakes were much higher, and the issues much more fundamental, than is commonly understood. The case was a battle between those who would privatize good health, making it a privilege to be enjoyed in proportion to wealth, and those who see it as a right for all — and a central component of a fair society and well-functioning economy. Even more deeply, it was about the way inequality is shaping our politics, legal institutions and the health of our population.'"
Since when /. became the platform for commie propaganda?
Inequality is good, it is what drives progress.
That's common to all monopolies in general: by disallowing newcomers and competition, they serve no purpose but feeding whatever company/cartel holds that monopoly. And governments, instead of disrupting them, take more and more bribes to allow creating even more monopolies...
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
In the valley everyone is ga-ga for patents. Their mantra seems to be greed is good and screw the little guy. It's an awful place to work if you have a heart.
The article author seems to assume that patented technology just falls from the sky and comes for free to the lucky patent holder who then exploits the rest of the world, when they say;
"But the patents had devastating real-world implications, because they kept the prices for the diagnostics artificially high."
they are arguing from false premises. Now in this case I happen to agree with not allowing patents on unmodified genes however it is still the case that the prices are only artificially high if the diagnostics would have existed had it not been possible to acquire patents on them in the first place,
According to the article it would have been ok if they had gotten the patents if they were motivated to save lives rather than make money. This is not an article which rationally discussed the problems of the patent system, and those problems are legion, it is an article that says if you try and make money you are bad. Not really very interesting.
-jon
Yet in Australia, the most corrupt and inequitable country in the English-speaking world, the courts ruled that the BRCA1 patent owners can screw 'we the people' for all they are worth, all the while their porcine politicians snorted and squealed in delight.
Gene patenting: Australian court rules BRCA1 patent is legal http://theconversation.com/gene-patenting-australian-court-rules-brca1-patent-is-legal-12240
This is nothing new. When asked to rule if Australians had free speech the Australian courts wouldn't even grant them that: http://www.findlaw.com.au/articles/4529/do-we-have-the-right-to-freedom-of-speech-in-austr.aspx http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1741850/QA-What-are-the-limits-to-free-speech http://www.ask.com/question/what-countries-don-t-have-freedom-of-speech
Well, nice to see America putting Australia to shame: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implications_of_US_gene_patent_invalidation_on_Australia
I'm not a fan of patents but Mr. Stiglitz's central argument is silly unless this is a pitch to Marxists or whatever-Richard-Stallman-is types. Landlords can hold arbitrary amounts of property and charge rent on all of them... isn't that an accepted part of our society?
I find it interesting that author opposes monopolies and then cries for help from the most eggregious monopoly of all....government. How else do patent laws exist without the government to enforce them? If the government did not exist at all, do you really think Myriad would be sending armed thugs to the doorstep of every one of their competitors claiming stolen property? That's not a winning business proposition to investors. He cries about the corportism that is rampant, completely ignoring the fact that corporations are an invention of government and only survive because of government protections. Clear case of not seeing the forest for the trees. Properly identified the problem but came to the conclusion that is guaranteed to simply propogate the problem further.
The Soviet Union had to spend 50% of its entire budget just to put up a facade of keeping up with the US -- and while almost entirely neglecting a navy comparatively.
China didn't do squat either, until the past 10 years when they actually introduced the freedom of private enterprise. This proves there's a hell of a lot more to freedom than just freedom of speech.
Get off your political narrative and look at actual reality, at actual measurements of well-being. Socialized countries are as dependent on invention as anywhere else, and can't give it out for free until other, better countries invent it first.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I've tried making that argument, but most people won't really care until it becomes a talking point beaten to death by demagogues on TV. Also, I cringed a bit when I read that summary, because every phrase screams "leftist academic". That's one of the quickest and easiest ways to get dismissed by moderates and center-right allies.
Innovation is moving faster than the laws. Just as in Trademark, one should have to prove actual use of patented material in the course of ordinary trade.
As others have said, all property rights exist to protect and promote inequality.
And what's the problem with that? Inequality is pretty much the defining characteristic of life. Evolution works because something got more than something else.
Hardworking and knowledgeable students get good marks. Then, they move into good universities and get good jobs.
In fact, any paradigm advocates differentiation and tracking reinforces inequality.
Is inequality wrong or right? Where is the boundary?
^(oo)^pig~
... it is an article that says if you try and make money you are bad...
The author I'm sure very well understands patents. I think your statement over-simplifies his argument though.
One of the conversations we as a society need to be having right now is regarding HOW people make money. Is it bad to try to make money? Absolutely not. Everyone needs to be able to at a minimum cover basic life needs, and those that work harder should definitely be able to reap what they sow and have extra goodies and a good retirement. I think that's fair.
The question is, are people making money by exploiting people? Are they knowingly taking advantage of people's ignorance, or taking advantage of laws and systems, to maintain their upper hand and avoid competing against others that very well might have better ideas and more drive, but cannot get a foothold to even start a business? Worst of all, are people suffering when they do not have to, if such a business model was not in the way of a better system? Patents make sure that anyone with a better idea (perhaps someone could come up with a way to make healthcare more affordable while still making money??) is not able to actually compete. What about the right of the entrepreneur to establish a new business? Why is everything always framed in the established businesses, rather than the people prevented from creating businesses (and jobs)?
IMHO, there is something sociopathic about one's business model being to make money on the suffering of others (particularly things like medical issues, which are often through no fault of one's own -- cannot choose your DNA, etc.). Simply saying "Well someone has to pay for it, and they have a right to make money" doesn't really correct the fact that someone is still capitalizing on someone's illness. Perhaps this is a place where the government makes a lot of sense -- perhaps most medical research should be publicly funded and available to all. Get the idea of "I have to make money off of this cancer patient!" out of the system entirely. (Really, I think education and health care should be rights (or "perks", if you prefer) of any citizen; the function being to give everyone a similar base when they start out in the world. After that, it is up to you what you want to make of yourself, but at least everyone is given a fair chance.). This isn't saying patents in general are a bad idea, but simply questioning whether patents on human health are a good idea..
I can't say I know the answer, but I think pretending any attempt at conversation is an assault on business's rights to make money is disingenuous, and I'm really getting sick of "...but business!" being the response to everything. How about we agree that if current business models are not working, we try to allow new ones to take over?
This is a feature of all private property protections. We don't mind having private property because the goal of our society is promoting general welfare, not promoting equality. Sometimes these two goals are compatible, and sometimes they are not.
Another central component of a fair society and well-functioning economy is a feedback mechanism for bad behaviors that discourages people from committing them before they become social parasites. We live in a society that is extremely self-indulgent in all of the vices and then many still shriek about a right which amounts to bailing them out of their own bad behavior at tax payer expense.
You know what that sounds like? The poor man's equivalent of TARP.
And I say this as someone who is actually not opposed to a social safety net for indigent children, the truly disabled, the retarded, and others who cannot really support themselves or bear responsibility for their choices.
Forget innovation in the process. SO...
Forget further improvement in the state of the art in medical care (and consign untold numbers of future folks to death). Forget getting most new medical treatments for things like cancer, HIV, the common cold etc. Forget the advancement of technology. Forget getting any new software.
Forget keeping GNU licensed software free...
All because you refuse to *think* though the reasons why the capitalist system actually works. A system that has contributed more to the improved standard of living (world wide) than any other economic system ever tried. You would take away the basis of this system with your need for equal outcome for all. You take away the benefit of working hard and taking risk when you take from the successful to give to the less successful. Take away my copyrights and patents and remove my motive for trying to come up with new solutions for your problems.
So (in cases other than this DNA one) a company spending billions on research for something and then making a basic effort to prevent bottom-feeding generic companies and foreigners from ripping off their work with zero investment in the initial research causes Earth's elite population to move to an exclusive space station orbiting Earth called Elysium? I think this article is a little overblown, as is my hyperbolic oversimplification of it.
The real issue here is stupid patents. People patenting round corners and touch to open and the wheel or whatever other stupidity the patent office lets pass by. Those pretty much result in extortion to other companies. But then you've got Dungeons and Dragons. The company invents something that cost a fortune to develop with staff time, spell checking, math, balancing, etc. Someone shouldn't be able to rip it off freely and resell it or give it away just because it's intellectual property and not "real" property. Some copyrights and patents reflect actual value and some are made up BS to go around suing people over. THAT is what needs to be fixed. Depriving the poor masses of their right to D&D information by lording it over them with patents and copyrights is a completely made up fantasy though (pun intended).
That's the whole idea.
You are welcome on my lawn.
his articles are copyrighted.
The problem with IP today is the complete lack of reasonable limits on who can make money from IP and for how long.
It's is fundamentally unfair to the world to expect unlimited and life-long (or longer) income from your IP (or even worse, from someone else's IP to which you have acquired the 'rights').
IP is a human mental construct that was brought into being to address fairness. The pendulum has swung way too far.
Nice simple sound bite. Pity that like most sound bites it grossly oversimplifies the situation. Monopolies form for a variety of reasons, some of which are very much in the public interest. Monopolies are not something to be generally desired but it's not difficult to point out circumstances where they are the least worst option available.
Patents create a monopoly for a time in order to combat the free rider problem which is a FAR worse problem in most cases than a temporary monopoly. There are lots of inventions that are simply not economically viable without something resembling patent protection. If you want to do away with patents and the problems with their associated monopoly, all you have to do is explain how your alternative to patents will combat the free rider problem. So far no one has come up with a lesser evil but if you can do so I believe a Nobel prize awaits you. (and no, just doing away with patents without a replacement will NOT improve things - particularly for tangible manufactured goods) Please note that I'm in no way implying our current regime of patent law is well designed or without problems. I quite firmly believe our current set of patent regulations are quite broken. I'm merely saying that patents (with their associated monopoly) as a concept are in the public interest due to the existence of the free rider problem.
In many cases you have a natural monopoly whereby the lowest cost of production is only possible if carried out by a single firm. Public utilities tend to fall into this category. If the cost of production is not as low as possible then prices to consumers by definition cannot be as low as possible either and low prices are very much in the public interest. However because any monopoly creates potential opportunities for abuse and monopolistic pricing, such monopolies are often regulated. Again, it isn't perfect but it certainly serves a purpose beyond "feeding whatever company holds that monopoly".
How short-sighted can someone be? If a landlord couldn't collect rent, they wouldn't provide an apartment for a renter to live in. Innovation doesn't "just happen". It happens because people expect to profit from their investment of time and effort.
So what if you have to pay a royalty? If it's too much, you don't have to take advantage of the innovation. At least you have a choice, which you wouldn't otherwise.
Moreover, the newest innovation means the older stuff becomes cheaper. An old iPhone may have been too expensive for you in the past, but you can pick one up for nearly free now. And the same thing will happen to current products when the next generation comes out. This isn't just true of phones, but lots of other things like cars, medicine, computers, etc.
Google "heat death" and see if you are still a big fan of equality.
Disclosure: I am a certified accountant with a specialty in cost accounting.
If your competitor steals your idea and then is able to copy your idea for cheaper...doesn't that mean you just lost and SHOULD go out of business?
What it means is that you need to study cost accounting. It's quite easy to demonstrate how a company that knocks off another company's product can gain a cost advantage. Research and development costs are often a very substantial portion of the cost of a good. Copying someone else's research is usually cheaper than doing it yourself. For two similar sized competent companies there is typically little difference in manufacturing or distribution costs. Holding all other things equal it is quite impossible for the company doing the R&D to sell it cheaper than a company which can simply copy someone elses work. This is called the free rider problem and it is the entire reason why patents exist in the first place.
They improved upon your idea, right or else how would they sell it for less?
They can sell it for less because they do not have to recoup R&D costs. Please go find a cost accountant and they will explain this to you in exquisite detail. You do not have to improve on a product at all to sell it for less if you do not have to do any engineering yourself.
So if society is going to confiscate intellectual property for the good of the whole.. is it going to compensate those who spent millions iventing it. or subsidize those who in process? As hard as it may be for some of you to beleive.. these people and companies invested A LOT of time and money into these products.
While I can see the temptation to compare IP to land ownership, I do not think they make for a good comparison.
Land, as a limited resource, can indeed run into a lock-in problem. When a small number of land owners have a lock on the majority of the usable property they can collect rent and essentially prevent people from building their own resources without actually contributing anything. This was a serious problem when it came to say farm land since once land owners grab up the land, actual farmers have no other option other then to hand over their profits to the 'owner'. This resulted in a class system where you were born (or married) into one side or the other but the lock in prevented upward mobility.
IP is a little trickier since so much of it is 'optional'. Outside overly broad or critical path patents, for the most part you can operate and build your business by working around them rather then having to pay someone for the privilege of working.
A casual observation of humanity will reveal that some are gifted with additional skills and intelligence. It is only natural that us elites should look out for the less unfortunates. To take it out of the land of IP, and put it into a more physical realm (which some of you are better able to deal with). Some people have no land and housing. It is only natural that those of us who own the land and the construction companies, and seats of city planning commissions should provide for those who do not own the dirt they unfortunately must walk on. Isn't it natural that those unfortunates should provide a little compensation in the form of rent and taxes for those that generously allow them to live on our dirt. It is. If you do not agree with me you must be one of those right wing nuts who hate poor people, or want everyone to live out in the country or in caves without access to running water, sanitation, and who don't have to pay rent to me.
I think the system works great. It is a way to ensure unfortunates have equal access. You want equal access don't you?
IP doesn't have to be right to exclude. Patent pools with a fixed percentage of sale price solves all the problems and have been used before with great effect. It gives the researcher a revenue stream and allows the public access to the latest tech.
The other problem often seen in IP is what I call the patent land rush. By law the patent must be novel and non obvious. The land rush occurs when a new tech, like mobile, opens up. Really email on mobile. It may be novel but it certainly is NOT non obvious.
Another indication that it's Not non obvious is when 2 or more people working separately apply for the same patent.
Changing the patent law to a patent pool decided by practitioner, not lawyers and enforcing the non obvious clause would eliminate much of the problem with today's patent system.
Myriad Genetics did *not* patent a gene, they patented a propensity for disease test, that featured a specific gene at the center of the test.
If what you say is true then why did the recent Supreme Court ruling invalidate Myriad's patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2? Myriad was apparently granted patents on naturally occurring genes they had managed to isolate and they used these patents to prevent anyone else from testing for the presence of these genes. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Myriad on this topic. This does not prevent Myriad from developing some novel test technology, it simply means they can't patent something that is just found in nature the same way they cannot dig up a pile of some mineral and get a patent for what they found.
How many other diseases will go unstudied, now that there is no reward for linking a gene to a disease?
There is plenty of reward for coming up with a therapy, coming up with novel testing equipment, etc. There is no public interest to be found in allowing patents for things simply found in nature.
Newton wrote, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." When you build upon the work of others who have come before, you effectively start near the finish pole. Thank goodness Newton had that advantage. If he had to start completely from scratch, he may have done nothing notable.
Now back to the topic of IP. If you were forced to donate your IP into the public domain, you would have far less incentive to create that IP in the first place. The fact that people can make money from their IP is responsible for the explosion of IP that makes us all better off in the long run. Don't kill this golden goose.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
what if all combine harvesters cost 100x as they do today
If all combines cost 100x as much, no one would be able to afford to buy one, and the intellectual property owners would make no profits whatsoever. IP owners would be extremely displeased by that arrangement.
Despite what you've been taught by leftist educators, the price structures that naturally arise out of capitalism tend to be fair to everyone, and work much better than your farfetched example.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
most people won't really care until it becomes a talking point beaten to death by demagogues on TV.
And the movie studios, which own the channels where these demagogues appear, have been doing their best to keep this from becoming a talking point because they benefit from expansion of copyright.
the goal of our society is promoting general welfare
In what way does increasing opportunities for rent-seeking increase welfare?
Privatizing good health, among other things IS " and a central component of a fair society and well-functioning economy ". For an example of the alternative, see this recent article from the Telegraph: http://bit.ly/12htACN "Equality," in the post-modern sense, is one of the most unjust ideas of our time.
All kinds of property reinforce inequality but it's the way world works. When the human species will no longer compete for resources then we will all be equal.
Forget getting any new software.
You underestimate how much free software is distributed to the public under permissive licenses.
Forget keeping GNU licensed software free...
If copyright in computer programs were to disappear, it would become lawful to make a copy of a proprietary derivative of a free program, disassemble it, comment it thoroughly, and spread the disassembly to the public. I've read that this would please RMS just as much as copyleft licensing.
Perhaps this might be a job for the takings clause. The U.S. government already has power under the Fifth Amendment to seize private property in exchange for "just compensation", which courts have defined as fair market value. Here's how it could work: An independent assessor comes up with a figure for the value of a copyright or patent, some non-profit organization crowdfunds buying the property, and then the government condemns the property under eminent domain and makes it available to the public under a permissive license.
if I had any belief at all that the current system led to a rich public domain of material before that material was largely devoid of value and/or forgotten due to publisher/creator neglect.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
So how do we make a living in a frictionless economy? When robots make products .... when business workflow automation on computers replaces people ... when Amazon allows all products to be sold at a loss ... when multiple implementations of every idea anyone could have for an app are given away ... when full-time work disappears and only low-paying six-month contracts are left ... ... what do we do next? How do people make a living when MBAs have squeezed all margins out of the economy and no one can make money? We can't all be gatekeepers with walled gardens and warehouses. That only works for a few centralized companies who control distribution channels.
Right now, the American economy is driven by extended warranties and lottery tickets - what's one step below that?
I was looking for the original "commies occupied /." post, but of course it is gone. Maybe a couple of weeks ago I posted an observation in response to a thread on global warming commenting on the liberalism of the /. moderators, and it was deleted not long after I posted.
This has become so bad that I have no desire to return to Southern California or work in Silicon Valley, Seattle, or NYC. I'm keeping my law and CS graduate degrees in Texas.
it's almost as if there is some happy medium between no protection and the overbroad protection proposed by Big-IP...
It's a lot like land. A songwriter has been successfully sued over having accidentally copied an eight note sequence from another song. But there exist only a limited number of eight note sequences. There are seven intervals in the scale from one note to the next, and the time from the start of one note to the start of the next can be short or long. (The last note has no following note.) This means 7 * 2 = 14 possibilities per note other than the last, or 14^(n - 1) possible n-note sequences, or fewer than 106 million eight-note hooks. How many millions of songs do you think are already in the ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC repertories?
If you have country full of selfish, dishonest, corrupt, cheating, criminal, stupid THIRD WORLDERS, then you can't expect it to magically be as wealthy, successful, safe, etc. as an ALL WHITE country. Yet these cretins are railing against 'inequality', meaning 'inequality of OUTCOME', when inequality of INPUT is a fact, and the one thing they don't want you to know.
Blacks are less intelligent than whites - fact - and everybody knows it.
telecommunications is responsible for the explosions of innovation
Then what's responsible for the invention of telecommunications itself? Perhaps only telecom patents should be allowed to go through.
Countries without patents and copyright did just fine compared to otherwise similar nations.
Because they were able to mooch off inventions and works produced in other countries.
So what if you have to pay a royalty? If it's too much, you don't have to take advantage of the innovation.
The law requires individuals to buy particular services in order not to be sent to prison. The law further requires those who provide these services to provide a level of service or safety or both that happens to require the use of a patented process or material. This is true of at least health care, housing, and transport.
An old iPhone may have been too expensive for you in the past, but you can pick one up for nearly free now.
Free? Owning an iPhone still costs $99 per year payable to Apple, plus cellular charges.
What needs to happen is that IP income needs to have its own marginal rates so as to discourage the SOYFA (sit on your fat ass) effect unless one reach retirement age and have a confirmed diagnosis of one or more chronic debilitating age-related conditions
--
Another fine opinion from The Fucking Psychopath®.
Am I the only one who likes inequality? Not to the extend that it exists today, but it's pretty much the only thing that makes most folks to get out of bed in the morning: the hope that they'll be better off than those that skip the "getting out of bed and going to work" part. That's why inventors invent, researchers research, directors direct, actors act, writers write, software engineers code, and folks at Boeing make airplanes and space ships. What would be their motivation if no matter what they did, they'd still be "equal" to someone who sits on his ass all day and does nothing? There are not one but several large scale examples that equality does not work. Russia, pre-capitalism China just the two largest ones. And not working was a crime in those countries, punishable by jail time.
Why must everything be the lowest common denominator?
Without poor people, who will do the work?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Citizenship is the nexus for the income tax. The US Department of State controls the procedure by which an individual may renounce citizenship and break that nexus.Even so, Congress gets to legislate on how the State Department goes about its business. There is a statute passed by Congress in 1868 recognizing "the right to expatriate". There have been SCOTUS rulings that have put the issue beyond the reach of Congress. However, Congress still can legislate on the issue of revenue. The IRS levies an "expatriation tax". Therefore, Congress can make it so expensive to break the nexus that it would not be worth the effort to free oneself from the shackles.
Having identified your state of residence as Texas, I am well aware of secession movements by reason of all that prosperity that y'all want to keep to yourselves like the inhabitants of Sodom and Gamorrah (selfishness that YHWH found offensive unto their destruction). Unless the Texas National Guard can seize the nukes within the boundaries of Texas so as to attempt to secede as a nuclear power, Texas is going nowhere and YOU will PAY your FAIR SHARE (identified as "just below the 'why bother producing' rate of taxation").
If Congress (ever) made taxation territorial and not based on citizenship, you can kiss your embassy, consulate and overseas military protection GOODBYE.
--
Another fine opinion from The Fucking Psychopath®.
allowing patent owners to seek rent (aka license / sue) instead of delivering goods to the society
I thought this was common knowledge.
Every once in a while, I hear a patent-system apologist claim that the chief reason for the patent system is to disclose and document the details of inventions, for society's benefit.
But it's ludicrous to think that, in our capitalist system, this altruistic motive was responsible for creating the patent system.
Patents are for one thing only: maximizing profit for the patent holder only. If this results in the collateral damage of hurting society, or in disabling the free market, they care not one whit about that damage.
(Or sometimes the apologists will claim that the chief benefit of the patent system is to disclose and document the details of inventions -- deliberately ignoring the fact that the academic community already performs the service of studying and explaining how inventions work, and will proudly continue to do so even if the patent system gets shut down.)
If you have country full of selfish, dishonest, corrupt, cheating, criminal, stupid THIRD WORLDERS, then you can't expect it to magically be as wealthy, successful, safe, etc. as an ALL WHITE country.
I'm going to speculate that this was targeted at the Desisphere. Sometimes the truth is racist. However, it does not make it untrue.
The rest of humanity walks off with the ideat that "Caste is the essence of Desi and Desi is the dress of caste".
However, there is a solution to the problem:
While extolling the various aspects of Sikhs, he has said that Sikhs not only fill the hunger of India but they keep a watch over India. They have also played a major role in securing India’s freedom. According to him, if India comes solely under the authority of the Sikhs, then the problems of degeneration and poverty will be solved. The fear of any foreign invasion will cease to exist.
This won't happen if Sikhs in India and elsewhere keep regarding caste and other matters 'agurmati' (contrary to what the Gurus taught). What is so hard to understand that wonderful activity described herein as "selfish, dishonest, corrupt, cheating, criminal, stupid" came to a crashing halt when Guru Nanak said "NO" to that thread.
Yes he did.
The baby gets a "free ride" off the mother: breastfed for no payment.
That's a free rider.
And it's you who said that R&D is a free rider (implicitly in your asinine statement). Since the baby is DEFINITELY a free rider, if R&D is a free rider, then they are equivalent in the extent of both being free riders.
In the case of "being a living animal", they are completely different.
Analogies are only analogies in the area they are analogous. Where they are not being analogized with each other, the fact that they are not analogues of each other in that realm is not proof they are not analogous in any other method.
Learn to read.
It helps.
Don't like your government?
Leave the country.
There are over 200 governments to choose from. Just go and choose a different supplier of government.
THERE IS NO MONOPOLY.
the court ruled, unanimously, that human genes cannot be patented, though synthetic DNA, created in the laboratory, can be.
If only that were true! Read the SCOTUS decision, already.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Of course it reinforces inequality. Not everyone has equally valuable ideas. Not everyone equally pursues to exploit those ideas. Not everyone executes a functional strategy to exploit those ideas. It would be a travesty to force Intel to share their schematics and fabrication designs with me or anyone else, just in the interest of 'equality'. Equality in the eyes of government recognition of rights=good. Equality in that all people have rights to your ideas=not good. That is theft, or servitude... neither of which is acceptable in a free society. The entire concept of 'equality' through abolition of IP seems to be balanced on social justice due to there being only one 'right' solution to a given situation. That is a fallacy. In the event I am prohibited from knowing how an Intel chip works, I am yet free to design my own if I have the ingenuity.
If copyright's suddenly disappeared. Copyleft software could be co-opted by *anyone* who could leverage the software, put their own unique spin on it, then sell the results for anything they could get. They could keep their additions to the software secret.
And anyone could buy a copy, disassemble it, document the additions, and spread the result.
No, they are not the same thing.
Note also, the wording is NOT "must" but "may".
It's a limited time, right?
Then reduce to 1 day.
Then an hour.
Then a minute.
Then keep going to femptoseconds.
Each of those are limited times, right?
Oh, right, those times are so limited they might as well not exist, yeah?
Well, the current law isn't limiting in any useful sense.
Reverse engineering, tooling up, getting resources and stock, setting up a market channel and meanwhile the first mover is getting the first mover bonus, where all those costs and time are already spent.
What? Do you think that you can just replicate a microwave?
No. Patents exist to promote progress.
A distinction without a difference. Patents promote progress by mitigating the effects of the free rider problem. Patents make many investments in research and development in useful arts and sciences possible that otherwise would not be economically viable. There is absolutely no way that Intel or Pfizer or IBM would exist without some means to mitigate the free rider problem.
You characterize copying first as "free riding", which is not true, and second as a "problem", which it definitely is not.
If you are smart enough to prove that your (bogus) assertion above is correct then there is a Nobel prize in economics waiting for you because NOBODY in the field of economics will agree with you. Let's be clear - I'm not talking about the mere transfer of information. I'm talking about producing knockoff products based on someone else's research and investment effort which is why someone would care about patent protection in the first place. Producing knockoff products most certainly is free riding and it most certainly is an economic problem. If you think otherwise you have never tried to run a business. Seriously, take a deep breath and go do some reading about the free rider problem and what it means. It's not just about people on buses.
Why is copying not free riding? Because free riding is about material goods and services. Ideas are neither.
An idea for a drug or a microchip which does not take tangible (and thus potentially saleable) form is useless. The ideas relevant to patent protection have to manifest themselves into products to be economically useful. Turning ideas into products costs significant money and if this money cannot be recouped then it will never be spent and society will not progress. It is trivial to demonstrate the economic effects to the free rider problem. You can (and should) share ideas all you want but when it comes to making the investments to turn those ideas into tangible form, there HAS to be a return on investment. Companies like Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Pfizer, and the rest could not possibly justify spending billions each year on research if others could simply take their findings and produce knockoff products. There would be no point to most of these investments.
If scientists cannot share their ideas with each other and the public without first getting permission and securing payment, to make sure no one is getting a free ride, we will progress very slowly.
Scientists are not prohibited from sharing ideas. They are however prohibited (temporarily) from profiting from someone else's ideas or buying knockoff products of patented ideas. Yes, unfortunately this sometimes this slows progress in places. However without patent protection from free riders progress would stop altogether in many technologies. If you want to argue that patent terms are too long or that patents are being granted for ideas that don't deserve protection then I will agree with you 100% since that is manifestly true. But until you can articulate a solution to the free rider problem or can articulate why it has somehow ceased to be a problem (and you have not done either) then you have no meaningful argument to make regarding whether to do away with patents.
Stiglitz does not point out that Myriad spent $500 million developing its BRCA tests. Without assurances of a limited period of patent protection, who would have made this investment?
What else did Myriad do? Myriad entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to provide at cost or below cost testing to the NCI and any researcher working under a NCI funded project. Myriad created a network of health care professionals, service providers and insurers, and hired a large number of genetic counselors to educate physicians on how to identify patients who would benefit from the test. Myriad is not a "patent troll", they actively invested and built the first market for genetic testing.
Stiglitz also makes the argument that "the two genes would likely have been isolated (âoediscovered,â in Myriadâ(TM)s terminology) soon anyway, as part of the global Human Genome Project."
This is complete BS. BRCA1 was linked to chromosome 17 in 1991. That year, Myriad Genetics was founded by Dr. Walter Gilbert, Mark Skolnick, Kevin Kimberlin and Peter Meldrum to develop a test for BRCA1. In 1994, BRCA1 was cloned at the University of Utah in Mark Skolnick's lab. Myriad launched BRACAnalysis in 1996. This was the first molecular diagnostic test for a common disease. This had never been done before.
The Human Genome Project did not publish an initial rough draft of the human genome until June 2000. The Human Genome Project did not clone genes nor did it develop any diagnostic tests.
Even if it did, would it have been better if four years had gone on with 20,000 or so women each year developing cancers due to BRCA who had no opportunity to have the test at any price?
The argument about equality is BS as well. If the government wishes to redistribute money, it should do that through taxing and spending, not manipulating the market. Yes Myriad rejected Medicaid's low-ball price, but they aren't alone in this - fewer than half of U.S. doctors and other health care professionals accept Medicaid patients. If the government really wants to offer BRCA testing to all who may benefit from it, they should tax people more and pay the company.
I can give an example where lack of patent protection is limiting the use of a pharmaceutical. Domperidone is a 5HT-3 receptor antagonist. It is well known by gastrointestinal specialists as an important tool for fighting the debilitating nausea of gastroparesis with many fewer side effects than other drugs. Its developer, Janssen Pharmaceutical, put it through FDA safety testing in the US and passed, but it failed FDA testing for efficacy in enhancing gastrointestinal motility in gastroparesis (we now know that gastric motility and nausea are often not highly correlated in gastroparesis). However it went off-patent before Janssen could bring it back for FDA efficacy testing for anti-nausea properties.
Because Domperidone never passed FDA efficacy testing in the US, it is illegal to prescribe in the US, despite being widely used around the world. Gastroparesis patients in the US must seek technically illegal supplies imported from outside the US because none of the generic makers now can afford to put it through FDA efficacy testing without an assurance of temporary monopoly pricing.
I'm not going to argue that the patent system is perfect, because it isn't. But I believe we are better with it than without. It should ensure that the benefits of temporary monopoly are limited to the specific intellectual contributions of inventors and nothing more. I agree with Stiglitz's amicus brief that it is possible that some types of patents should last longer or shorter than others. And I also believe that major international standards such as video compression should have a "put up or shut up" period to ensure that people developing systems know what patents are applicable and can license them without submarine patents showing up years later.
The U.S. Government decided that intellectual property don't have a meaning anymore as they decided that we don't need to have privacy (we aren't owners of what we produce for ourselves anymore?). So is another corporate leverage tool, not something that we can have. Is just another misplaced title over something that don't have that meaning, like "Department of Justice", to fool you.
The issue isn't the concept of Intellectual Property. The problem is how IP rights are doled out, and the breadth of patents issued.
The fact that patenting a genome was even ever up for debate is systemic of the patent office in general not knowing what the fuck they're doing. You should be able to patent the method by which a genome is altered, sure. You could even claim that a sequence that you created from scratch in a lab is your IP (assuming that sequence doesn't occur naturally) But the original proposition was beyond asinine. It would be like inventing a camera, taking a picture of someone, and then claiming that person's face is now your IP. And this concept gained traction. WTF. That they weren't immediately laughed out of the office is just another symptom of the root cause.
Likewise, Google has IP rights over their search process, and the algorithms used in searches ... but they certainly have no dominion over the concept of "web searching." Movie studios have IP rights over their specific movies, and characters contained therein... but Marvel doesn't have rights over the concept of Super Hero movies. These examples are obvious and clear. But as soon as we start talking about something even a little bit abstract, like "genomes," everyone drops the common sense.
I'm not familiar enough to know the root cause, but my SWAG* is simply age and indifference. Those in charge of the Patent Office are old farts who can't be bothered to learn these newfangeled thingy-ma-whats-its. A more cynical view would be that those in charge know exactly what they're doing, and have been well paid to keep doing it... but I'll side with Hanlon's Razor on this one.
*that would be this SWAG. Not whatever newfangled definition you kids are using today.
This signature is false.
Sure, but I am not sure how much IP work they are doing.
First, I will point out that even in Africa’s 200 million poverty bound woman, those woman who produce superior results get ahead economically. Sadly, African culture tends to discount heavily the value of woman and “woman’s work”.
Second, I would point out that a Free Market is not a magical wand. In order for it to work you need the right social institutions, like equal access to the court system to enforce contracts (and to protect your IP, to keep this vaguely on topic), infrastructure, land registry, etc.
Third, I mentioned superior results, not just hard work. This is to reflect human capital and in this regard you have been screwed by the government.
Some inequity drives the system. Too much inequity crushes all by the elite. You fall into the second category and you are being treated as second class citizens. This is not right.
You may want to chat with Lysistrata. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysistrata
...Who is John Galt?
It is only AFTER a product is shown to be profitable does it attract imitators. This allows for a natural limited duration monopoly in which to recoup R&D costs.
Problem is that the time period you are talking about is FAR too short to recoup R&D costs. I've got 20 years experience in manufacturing and I assure you that the time period you propose is actually incredibly short. My company makes wire harnesses. We're a contract manufacturer. If you handed me almost any example of any wire harness, I could probably have a working prototype copy in your hands within a week. A month at the outside if it is really, really complicated. And we're a small shop with limited resources. One of the big companies could probably do it in a few days no matter how complex it is. Doesn't matter how innovative your product is, I can copy it cheaper than you can design it and I can probably have it in production inside of a month. Exactly how do you think you are going to recoup R&D costs on anything original in that short a time window?
Let's take drugs for example. Conducting the clinical trials to get a new drug approved takes many years and can easily cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Setting up the manufacturing equipment to produce the drug typically is trivial by comparison and may only cost a few million. If I gave you the chemical formula for a drug, you could have someone manufacturing it within a month for a few cents a pill. There is no possible way any drug company could recoup their investment in the time it would take someone to knock off their product and they certainly can't "just innovate more" because that literally takes a decade for just a single drug.
Same situation with lots of other technology and manufactured products. It is MUCH cheaper to copy than to produce original work. This creates an economic disincentive to conduct original research. You will note that there is a very strong correlation between locations with strong patent and copyright protection and locations with strong research. That's not to say research cannot happen at all in places without such protection but it is almost invariably less.
Patents cause a market distortion by setting an artificial hurdle for innovation. If you jump this high you get a 17 year monopoly.
Yes they do. Because that twenty year monopoly is incentive for you to conduct the R&D necessary to make the product in the first place. Patents aren't supposed to be for incremental improvements to existing products. They are supposed to be for genuinely novel inventions - things that were hard (and probably expensive) to come up with. I'm very much of the opinion that our current patent regime is in bad need of reform but doing away with it altogether would be unbelievably stupid. I've spent a lot of time in places like China and Southeast Asia with rather lax enforcement of patent rights and there is a very good reason why we still don't see a lot of original technology come out of those places. Companies that have to do R&D are VERY reluctant to do it in China because of the free rider problem. They can easily be put out of business by knock offs no matter how innovative they are. They make stuff there but they are very careful with sharing design information. I don't think you have an adequate appreciation for the economics at work here. What you are saying sounds good from an ivory tower but doesn't really work in the Real World (tm).
I do think we should keep in mind that they only acquire the content by buying it from producers. And I think we all agree that artists, engineers, and authors deserve to be paid for their work... otherwise they won't be able to do it as anything but a hobby.
I do agree that the publishing business should move more and more to a direct marketing approach. That is... you wrote a book... you host a website that sells the ebook... people click on the link... money shows up in the author's bank account minus some sort of profit sharing fee from the distributor. Something around 10-20 percent would be reasonable.
It would be really easy for most of the content distributors to provide simple easy to use systems for content producers to host and sell their content. And from that, content distributors could take a cut. But the producer would maintain control over it at all times.
Its all about contracts.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You provide no evidence that 3D printing would have been developed in the first place, if not for the additional profitability afforded by patent protection. The original inventors didn't release their IP into the public domain; they filed for patent protection, which is a pretty strong indicator that they were motivated by profit, and without that motivation they wouldn't have done the development work.
So the evidence is that we have the patent system to thank for the very existence of 3D printing. And something has to exist before it can become a craze.
The inventors of PCs (IBM, Xerox, Apple et.al.) received thousands of patents on the new features they developed. They poured billions into R&D, only because they knew they would receive patent protection. The IP system greatly accelerated development of PCs. How would you feel if they hadn't done the R&D, and we were still using 6502 processors and storing data on cassette tapes?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
IANAL, but it seems that people are throwing around different terms in this discussion. In the U.S. it breaks down into categories.
Copyright is for works of art, books, music, software, etc. Since it lasts for over 100 years now, it typically does not encourage continued creative work. Christopher Tolkien may be a worth exception to this, however.
Patents are for inventions, such as the vacuum cleaner, the laser and (sadly) software. Due to the wisdom of the octogenarians that we call the supreme court, we now have business method patents, one click patents, design patents, and drug re-patents that most sane people agree is an abuse of the system.
Trade secrets are private and usually governed by contracts. HP sued their former CEO, Mark Hurd, to prevent him from working for Oracle. Their claim was that he would use trade secrets about HP's business with a competitor.
Trademarks are for branding, such as logos. Disney, realizing that "Steamboat Willy" would fall out of copyright, uses a short clip at the beginning of every DVD as a trademark. They also successfully sued someone for using dinsey.com as a porn website because it is too similar or confusing with the Disney brand.
Ideas are simply bunk. How much research and development goes into having a thought? This is where software patents lie. A patent holder does not even need to develop a working product or write any code. This is the new business model for software companies. See:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/496/when-patents-attack-part-two
The all encompassing term, "Intellectual Property" is a catch all phrase for all of the above which is abused by many companies with the support of governments in positions of power and enforced through international treaty.
Derivative copyrightable works are a gamble, For instance, John Fogerty was sued for sounding too much like himself. Parody of a creative work is considered free speech, while satire is not.
Some things are not supposed to be patentable, like math or nature. There are exceptions to this, however. Software patents, and business method patents defy this logic because there is not a mathematician sitting on the Supreme Court. Monsanto controls the soy bean crop, and soon the entire food chain with DNA patents which appear to be derived from nature.
I hope that helps clear up some of the confusion.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Inequality is good, it is what drives progress.
That is not always true and there is an obvious example when it gets wrong: imagine an extreme inequality, where one person has everything and the others have nothing. Do you think this is desirable and/or efficient to drive progress?
Private property should exist but needs some limitations. This is just a reflect of the general will of the citizen. A majority of people want to own things, which usually turn in favor of enforcing private property. But if the majority have nothing, private property looks much less legitimate. This is not communism vs capitalism, this is just People sovereignty.
Inventors provide essentially the same benefit as do graphic artists, composers, authors, and other creative types,
The fact that they create memes rather than factory-made widgets is irrelevant.
If they create something others want to buy, why should you gimme-gimme children complain.
They worked long and hard and have a right to the fruits of their labor.
Isn't the point of the argument pretty trivial. You own stuff, so you're unequal with those who don't. That will be true next year too, only more so because you will use your stuff to get more stuff.
Or turning this around, for instance, why do you have to pay rent for a house?
So why do exclusive rights to an invention last 20 years, to a work of authorship last 95, and to land last forever? Why shouldn't the Shakespeare estate still be getting royalties? Any defense of property rights must answer these.
Some folks think the tragedy of the commons or other such metaphors justify property ownership being generally good for increasing average welfare, but some do not.
For example, some folks recognize a concept of tragedy of the anticommons, in which an author or inventor lacks access to underlying property on which to base his own property, and this lack of access impedes the progress of science and useful arts. Once all 106 million possible melodies are copyrighted, how will anybody be able to write a song anymore? Consider the short story "Melancholy Elephants" by Spider Robinson.