You are right of course. The patent system was introduced in order to solve
a real problem. However it has now got to the stage that it's no longer simply
the laws that are the problem. It's the people involved. The lawyers, the
people who employ them and even the Judges have vastly overreached and are now
causing massive damage to freedom and to economic development. The only
possible way to change this is radical change.
How about an idea:
Invalidate all current patents and copyrights. Have a 20 year moratorium
on them. In 20 years time, once the people currently involved in the system
have moved on and we have seen how life works in the modern world without such
restrictions, we come back and revisit the issue and consider whether to
reinstate a more limited copyright and patent system.
In the meantime we
make the link between the loss of freedom of expression and action which
copyrights and patents imply and the duties of the holder of the copyright or
patent to push forward knowledge about their system. Some terms should be
negotiated for any future system:
- copyrights are lost if the text they
have is not transferred at least once a year
- patents are lost if, for a
period of five years, there is no product available to the public which
practices the patent.
- patents must be available on RAND terms for products
which do not compete with a current or planned (that needs to be tightly
defined!!) licensed product
- patent holders must publish and widely
distribute, at least once every two years, an article explaining the benefits
that their patent provides and how the public will benefit when it
becomes
- patent and copyright holders are clearly given a duty to communicate
about the costs and benefits of their monopoly rights; the public must always be
clear that they have sacrificed part of their freedom for the patent holder
- if the holder of a copyright or a patent uses the term "intellectual
property" or in any other way conflates monopolies on speech with physical
property their ownership of the monopoly right is invalidated.
Note
that, the last term is in no way a restriction on their freedom of speech in the
US sense. Just as a person can agree in a contract not to speak on certain
issues, in taking a patent or copyright, the holder would be agreeing to promote
the free use of their patent or copyright after it's expiry and the licensed use
during it's term. Since advocates of Intellectual Property would not agree with
the above system of patents I would expect them not to take patents and then
they would be free to express their belief in Intellectual property. This might
require a constitutional amendement in the US.
Since "Intellectual
Property" would now be a clearly depreciated term, some more accurate
alternative term such as "Reciprocal Intelectual Freedom Restrictions" (RIFR)
would have to be invented. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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