Intellectual property, or IP, are rights that are granted by the government to encourage
innovation and creativity.
The term was originated to come up with a defense of certain types of monopoly privileges,
primarily patent and copyright law, which had existed for a few centuries in the West.
Intellectual property is not property in the same sense as normal property rights because
normal property rights are designed to protect scarce resources, things in the world that
we can have a conflict over.
This includes our bodies and other resources in the world, tangible material objects.
Property rights arise as a social mechanism to allow us to use these resources cooperatively,
and peacefully, and productively with each other, but intellectual property covers ideas
and non-scarce resources, patterns which can be infinitely copied and multiplied.
One of the benefits of- of having property is the ability to keep other people out.
I can let people that I don't want to come to my house know that they can't be there.
And patents and copyright provide the same sort of, uh, what's known as exclusive rights
that private property does that- that you can say, "You can't trespass on my invention
and you can't copy my- my new creative work."
So, the difficulty when we look at intellectual property as property is: how do we know where
the boundaries are?
But as far as what are our rights, the idea that we can keep people out, that's exactly
like physical property.
Legally, the proper way to understand intellectual property rights is a- a negative servitude
or a negative easement.
And if you understand what a negative easement is, it gives the holder of the easement a
right to prevent the owner of the existing property to use it the way he sees fit.
And these are perfectly legitimate if they're granted voluntarily like in a restrictive
covenant in our neighborhood.
But in patent and copyright, the government grants these monopoly privileges to holders
of- of these ideal rights and it allows them to stop other people from using their bodies
or their other property as they see fit.
There's a number of philosophical justifications for intellectual property, but one of the
clear ones is- is John Locke's principle.
The idea that if you put your effort and mix it with, uh, nature, you should get property
rights in the resulting object.
Uh, if- if you take a tree and turn it into a barrel, the barrel should be yours.
And that's the same idea with intellectual property.
One of the things intellectual property does is it allows you to get exclusive rights on
what you invent.
And with those exclusive rights, you can either keep other people from doing it and manufacture
the- the invention yourself or you can license it to a patent licensing firm.
The inventor, who has spent a lot of time and money in the uncertain activity of inventing,
can recoup some of those costs and some of those expenses.
So, the question is not whether a given policy or law incentivizes innovation.
The purpose of law is to protect property rights.
Like, we have to recognize that in today's world, even though we have copyright law,
piracy is rampant.
In today's 2017, artists have to deal with the fact of copyright and piracy.
And, uh, they have to come up with business models to work around that.
So, but then the question is: the absent patent and copyright law, what protections, uh, would
they have?
Well, first of all, they have property rights, like we all do; they have the right to own
their own studio, or their own printing press, or their own machine shop and make inventions;
they have the right to engage in commerce and sell their goods.
You can sell tickets at a concert, you can sell a CD if you want to.
There's nothing prohibiting you from selling a CD just because you don't have a copyright.
It's just that other people could sell a copy of it, too.
So, you have competition.
There are a number of things that are happening right now that are causing uncertainty in
the patent system, devaluing patents, and decreasing the public's confidence in the
patent system as a whole.
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board is getting rid of lots of patents, invalidating lots
of patents, and a number of these patents are on really great, innovative technology.
So, what I would do to reinvigorate the patent system is change the way that bad patents
can be invalidated by making it more certain and less harassing for innovators and patent
owners.
So, the primary reforms I would make would be to patent and copyright and the primary
reform would be to immediately and, uh, completely abolish both patent and copyright law.
I think we would instantly be way better off in terms of innovation and freedom.
Just because something's been in place for 200 years or so doesn't mean it's just.
When people copy, they're learning, and they're emulating what people do.
We have to not be afraid of competition.
We have to embrace private property rights and- and we have to understand that state-granted
rights to protect you from a competitor are the opposite of a free market, and they undercut
private property rights.
With patent rights, what we've gotten is a ton of innovation over the last number of centuries,
great inventions, fantastic inventors that are worthy of being protected and we're
all enjoying the results of this activity.
If we don't have this strong patent system that has allowed for this level of innovation
going forward, we might get less innovation and a lot less cool toys to play with.