[The_Reader_David]

Not surprisingly, given that you are a patent attorney, you have correctly described the state of the law. However, there are serious questions as to whether the reification as property of state granted monopolies, which are what copyright and patents have always been since the Law of Queen Anne and the Statute on Monopolies of 1648, the British laws the Founders had in mind when they gave Congress the right "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries,"

• is actually constitutional under a strict construction of the Constitution
• serves the purpose of promoting "the Progress of Science and useful Arts"
• is good policy
• is morally coherent: whatever courts and lawyers may hold, are state granted monopoly rights actually property?

I would suggest that the reification of copyrights and patents as "intellectual property" fails on all four counts, and that reigning in patent trolls, while it is against your own guild interests as a patent lawyer, is good policy, and a good place to start in putting these state-granted monopolies back into constraints originally envisioned by the Founders.

[indthkr]

•is actually constitutional under a strict construction of the Constitution...
•serves a purpose.....
•is good policy....
•is morally coherent....


There is a lot of this kind of discussion going on, most recently regarding the 1st, 2nd, and 4th Amendments. I guess if we just get the shredder going and adopt Chinese Law, we won't have to worry about any of it.

[Smedley]

"I would suggest that the reification of copyrights and patents as "intellectual property" fails on all four counts, and that reigning in patent trolls, while it is against your own guild interests as a patent lawyer, is good policy, and a good place to start in putting these state-granted monopolies back into constraints originally envisioned by the Founders."

And I respectfully disagree with your viewpoint. I've got two upcoming cases of individual inventors against corporate giants with 100% proof that the corporate giants stole my clients' intellectual property. Undoubtedly one will be named a patent troll, but only because the corporate giant put my client out of business.

Otherwise, patents are property, and property should be transferrable to the person who is willing to pay most for it given the seller is willing.