Intellectual property

Intellectual property is property in ideas or patterns. Intellectual property laws grant monopolies to originators of ideas, giving them a legal right to initiate force (through the state) against anyone making use of the idea without the permission of the originator of that idea.

Modern libertarians, such as Stephan Kinsella and Jeffrey Tucker, consider the term to be self-contradictory, because ideas and patterns are not scarce or rivalrous, so logically cannot be owned.

Types of intellectual property

Intellectual property usually refers to patents, copyrights and trademarks. It can also include trade secrets, libel^{[dubious – property discuss]} and slander^{[dubious – property discuss]}.

History

Patents emerged as a form of protection for mercantiles. Copyrights are rooted in control and censorship of ideas.

Views

Intellectual property is a regularly debated subject among libertarians.

• Stephan Kinsella and Jeffrey Tucker are two of the most prominent strong opponents of all forms of intellectual property.
• Murray Rothbard was opposed to patents, but he believed that a weak form of copyrights could be enforced through contracts.
• Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek were largely opposed to intellectual property.
• Ayn Rand was an enthusiastic supporter of intellectual property.

Arguments against intellectual property

Ethical

Stephan Kinsella's seminal article, Against Intellectual Property outlines the modern libertarian case against all forms of intellectual property. Kinsella's paper focuses on the unethical nature of intellectual property rights. They are always in opposition to real material property rights. They are a straightforward government grant of monopoly to a favored producer.

Utilitarian

Since advocates of intellectual property generally appeal to utilitarianism (that 'nothing will be created' if creators are not granted a monopoly over their creation), Michele Boldrin and David Levine have examined, in their book Against Intellectual Monopoly, the empirical evidence for this claim. They find that, rather than stimulating creativity and innovation, intellectual property laws - especially patent laws - usually inhibit creativity and innovation.

Arguments in favor

According to Murray Rothbard, only activities which are not consonant with the free market would be outlawed by the market. In terms of copyright, when a person writes a work and imprints "copyright" on it, he sells it on condition that the buyer not reproduce the work for sale. By buying the copyrighted work, the buyer implicitly agrees to this condition and is contractually obligated to uphold it. Patents that go beyond this restriction of the copyright contract to prevent people who independently arrive at the same invention from using and selling that invention are punishing an act that is not implicit theft, and hence would not be outlawed by the free market; thus, patents become a state grant of exclusive monopoly privilege, incompatible with the free market.

Ayn Rand argues that, since ideas must originate from the mental effort of an individual (or group of individuals), that originator holds the exclusive property rights to the product(s) of his labor. While one cannot copyright theoretical knowledge - discoveries of facts or truths of reality not previously known - he can claim the right to an invention, the practical application of that knowledge. Since the object that is patented might not have existed without the inventor, and the object copyrighted would not have existed without the creator, the ideas behind such created objects are the property of their originators.

Links

• Intellectual Property Page resources compiled by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine

• Writings
  • "The Fallacy of Intellectual Property" by Daniel Krawisz, August 2009
  • "The Fight against Intellectual Property" by Jacob H. Huebert, 2010

• Other media
  • "Ideas Are Free: The Case Against Intellectual Property" lecture by Stephan Kinsella, June 2010 (transcribed as Mises Daily here)

• Intellectual property at Wikipedia