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The Burden of Intellectual Property Rights On Clean Energy Technologies
Lasrick writes If climate change is to be addressed effectively in the long run, nations of all descriptions must pursue mitigation and adaptation strategies. But poor countries face a potential hurdle when it comes to clean-energy technologies—most of the relevant intellectual property is held in the rich world. Many observers argue that it's unfair and unrealistic to expect massive energy transformations in the developing world unless special allowances are made. Yet intellectual property rights are intended in part to spur the very innovation on which climate mitigation depends. This article is the first post in a roundtable that debates this question: In developing countries, how great an impediment to the growth of low-carbon energy systems does the global intellectual property rights regime represent, and how could the burdens for poor countries be reduced?
Is anybody even pretending that patents exist anymore for anything other than lining corporate and lawyer pockets? Just tell them to piss off because the planet is more important.
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What we really need to do is sit down and talk about whether we merely need to stop abuses of the patent system, or need to scrap it altogether and in the meantime do what we can to stop the most egregous abuses of the system.
I disagree. Historically, our patent system worked very well. The vast majority of patent abuse and trolling has been relatively recent, and in fact was nowhere near this level 20 years ago. The problems have gone hand-in-hand with the recent crony capitalism and government revolving doors. That is, I suspect they share the same root causes.
When something works pretty much fine for 200 years, then doesn't work good for 20 years, it isn't very helpful to ask what's wrong with the system that worked RIGHT for all that time. Rather, the thing to do is ask what went WRONG in recent years.
Hint: it wasn't "the system". The system is pretty much the same as it has always been.