Re: [Patents] Paper: "Rent Seeking and Innovation"

[Russell McOrmond <russell@flora.ca>]

On Thu, 17 Apr 2003, Gregory Aharonian wrote:

> > ... since ancedotal evidence strongly suggests that intellectural
> > ... property reduces rather than encourages innovation
> 
> Which is a meaningless statement in light of emprical evidence showing
> that the amount of innovation, as measured by new articles, papers,
> books, music, art, new technical products, etc., continues to grow.
> Anything slow down to the contrary is moe due to the state of the
> stock market than IP issues.

  Correlations are not causalities.  Everything you have said in support
of patents are also largely meaningless as no causality relationship
demonstrating the merit of patents has yet been proven.

  I believe we are all on all sides of this debate calling for extensive
economic studies, separating each type of subject matter (as the economics
of one do not relate to the economics of another), to determine for each
type of subject matter whether patents are helpful, neutral or harmful.

  As much as we have no proof yet that patents are harmful across all
types of subject matter, there is also nothing to tell us whether
innovation is continuing because of or *despite* the chill of legal
uncertainty created by copyright beyond the expression of an idea (such as
software interface copyright, legal protection for TPM) or questionable
increases in patentable subject mater (information process patents).


  There are many types of IP that people likely wouldn't believe exist 
until a case is brought against them.

  This lack of useful economic data around IP issues reminds me of the BSA
studies suggesting that reducing software copyright infringement would
help the economy.

  - We note a correlation between lower copyright infringement and a 
    strong economy.
  - We also note a correlation between lower infant mortality rates and a 
    strong economy.


  While I may agree with the suggestion that a strong economy lowers
infant morality and copyright infringement rates, the reverse goes from
the absurd (lower copyright infringement improves the economy) to the
outright offensive (copyright infringement kills babies).

> Greg Aharonian
---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
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