None of us hate patent trolls nearly enough. In fact, all of IP has serious flaws that need fixing - or abolishing.
I used to think Intellectual Property (IP) was valid. Why wouldn’t I? After all, my business school insisted patents were vitally necessary to incentivize production and innovation. Even Ayn Rand, my gateway to libertarianism, insisted IP was a moral necessity, saying:
“Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man's right to the product of his mind.”
Heck yeah! What could be more just!
Except, the arbitrariness of the time length for patent and copyright always seemed “off” to me, as well as some of the IP lawsuits I’d see that seemed crony-ish rather than righteous.
Then Stephan Kinsella’s book Against Intellectual Property convinced me that Ayn Rand was wrong. It’s very powerful, especially when read in tandem with Boldrin and Levine’s book Against Intellectual Monopoly.
The first is libertarian property rights theory. The second is empirical research. I read them back-to-back and was finally convinced that IP is immoral AND unnecessary for innovation.
In fact, in far too many cases, IP actively retards innovation.
You can get a close-up view of how unjust and economically destructive IP can be by watching this fascinating video called The Patent Scam.
It’s really good. Don’t be turned off by the kitchy opening skit, because this video will shock and horrify you. Watch the whole thing and you’ll see just how insane the US patent system really is.
But even if our system wasn’t so bonkers, IP is inherently flawed. It’s a complete wrong turn and dead end as an intellectual and legal concept. IP doesn’t protect property rights, it violates property rights.
I won’t try to totally change your mind on IP here, but I highly encourage these two very short books. But before that, again, check out this heartbreaking, enraging, and illuminating video about patent trolls and how destructive they are.
Even if you disagree with me (and the brilliant legal theorist Stephan Kinsella) you will easily see that the way the current IP system “works” is massively corrupt, cruel, and destructive.
If you can’t watch the whole thing for some reason, at least skip forward to 1:04:00 where the documentary shows the ghost-town of “businesses” and crony law shops that are behind so much patent trolling in the US.
But again, I recommend you watch the whole thing to see the full scope of the horror that is a patent troll operation. You’ll never think of patents the same way again. All too often, patents wrecks the lives of the most innovative and productive people among us.
And patents have always been corrupt. The concept began as a monopoly granted by the king to favored cronies. We should never have adopted it in the US system, and the quicker we correct course, the better off we’ll be.
So sez me, anyway.
Naturally,
Adam
It’s a tricky thing. I have several patents including some just filed on work I do for the trucking company I work for. For the longest time we just kept these software models hidden as “trade secrets “. Now we’ve patented them. It’s nice for me because I get a feather in my cap. No other company is stopped from developing similar solutions because it’s basically impossible to police software. However, if I had developed some piece of hardware that I was going to sell, and wanted to start a small company to do it, it would be nice to have 5-10 years of protection before BigCompanyInc starts producing it and destroys me. However, there’s no question that patent trolling is a thing. I never had time for it because I had real work to do. By the way, same issue with copywriting. See all of Disneys manipulation of the system to stop any and all from drawing any of their characters without the express approval of Disney Inc. Goes for any property they’ve purchased as well….like the original illustrations for Winnie the Pooh
When I started my business 12 years ago, I had just read Levine's book and was conflicted as to how a staunch anti-IP guy could make a living selling pictures. I reached out to Levine and he graciously agreed to speak with me and helped me navigate those murky waters.
Years later I interviewed him on my first podcast (unrelated to the IP concerns) and again he was super gracious with his time and we had a great chat. (see episode here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-9-there-is-something-funny-about-this-w-david-k-levine/id1254906317?i=1000580848974).
Digression aside, IP is a horrible system where everybody is trying to fuck everybody else and the only winners are the lawyers (although there is solace in the fact they too will soon be rendered obsolete by AI).