From Mises Daily earlier in 2010:

Reducing the Cost of IP Law

Mises Daily: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 by Stephan Kinsella

[This paper is the conclusion of a two-part series. The first article was “Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way.”]

As I noted in Part 1, there is a growing clamor for reform of patent (and copyright) law, due to the increasingly obvious injustices resulting from these intellectual property (IP) laws.[1] However, the various recent proposals for reform merely tinker with details and leave the essential features of the patent system intact. Patent scope, terms, and penalties would still be essentially the same.

How should the IP system be reformed? For those with a principled, libertarian view of property rights, it is obvious that patent and copyright laws are unjust and should be completely abolished.[2] Total abolition is, however, exceedingly unlikely at present. Further, most people favor IP for less principled, utilitarian reasons. They take a wealth-maximization approach to policy making. They favor patent and copyright law because they believe that it generates net wealth — that the value of the innovation stimulated by IP law is significantly greater than the costs of these laws.[3]

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