Posted on 12/01/2015 6:00:59 PM PST by Kaslin
You are begging the question on the most important issue. It is by no means clear, and I would hold that is it is false, that the Constitutional power given the Congress to grant monopolies under Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, creates “property”. Yes, lots of lawyers like the fact the courts now treat it as such, as do lots of rent-seeking commercial interests that never penned a sentence worth reading or invented anything, but is it really property?
Property rights are not time-limited, but the monopoly rights Congress may grant are specified as “for a limited time”, though we’ll see whether that really has any meaning, or when Steamboat Willie is about to pass into the public domain, whether it becomes “life plus 120 years”, then “life plus 200 years,”... a plain violation of the Founders’ intent.
“Most inventions and indeed most progress is incremental improvements on what already exists.”
No argument there. Seminal patents are rare.
“I would argue that they retard innovation and freeze creativity at a point in time.”
The costs in “participating” in the patent process are prohibitive for the little guy—no doubt about that. Thank the US govey for tapping into another source to pull money into the general coffer. However, patents also give the little guy a way to compete with the big boys—to get into or stay in the marketplace.
A prime example in support of patents is the company R&D costs. Why expend to innovate if the next company down the street can simply copy your invention and use it. China is a perfect example of copying and attempting to push products into the market at little cost. If China can copy and push such copies back into our industry, many jobs would be lost here that otherwise would be viable with IP protection.
Trade secret law may be fine for chemicals, compositions, etc., but not so much for mechanical inventions or even electronics, for that matter. Reverse engineering in electronics is sophisticated.
Didn’t mean to beg the question, merely it seems that one person’s ‘patent troll’ is another person’s ‘rightful property owner’. *AND* that lawyers and the courts have gotten away from the purpose of those granted monopolies....
As to if it constitutes “property” in the actual sense, as opposed to the common phrase “Intellectual Property”, you raise a most interesting point indeed!
If John Smith were to buy an IP address called www.fordmotorcompany.com, I don't think he's going to own it for very long.
I’m not sure what this is about, but everybody is so effing sick of Disney and their copyright laws, that I can almost understand taking it out on all forms of intellectual property.
I agree. Trade secret status is a limited alternative to patent protection. It certainly does not work for most inventions.
When people have their inventions stolen, or the costs are too prohibitive to exploit them through patent protection, many will simply not innovate. This defeats the whole purpose of patents and is the reason reform is needed.
labor” is just a metaphor, and a bad one. One cannot “mix” labor. It is an activity, not a substance. ..
ill need to look at this later and you raise interesting opposition to locke . but my trademarks are yes modification of something in my mind but i did make them up. if i have a product named chew this. do i not have a write to market the product under that name? and have some control over that. and why do you oppose all ip? just curious on the foundation of that.
Trademark comes into the law both as IP and as tort law, with tort being the older common law source and IP a more recent invention. I think the IP laws regarding trademark are clearly unjustifiable. However, mislabeling a product in order to deceive potential buyers can be an act of fraud. Current law makes this a tort against the trademark holder and the buyer, but I consider it to be a tort against the buyer only.
you know more than i. about this i just use the system at this point to protect my branding. i’ll have to re-look at it philosophically.
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