The Adam Smith Institute continues to impress–from previous articles criticizing IP (see Intellectual property: an unnecessary evil) to excellent pro-liberty books released in free PDF form pursuant to their admirable, progressive open access policy (see my post The Condensed Wealth of Nations).
And yesterday they published an excellent piece by their Research Director, Sam Bowman, which is clear, concise, principled, and hard-hitting attack not only on patent “abuse” but on the entire institution of patents (h/t Wendy McElroy):
Do not feed the patent troll
Written by Sam Bowman
Tuesday, 18 October 2011 05:42Apple iPad vs. Samsung Galaxy
Samsung’s move to have iPhone 4S sales banned in Australia and J
Samsung’s move to have iPhone 4S sales banned in Australia and Japan is just the latest battle in the patent war between Apple and Samsung. It follows the EU’s banning of the sale of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab (on hold for now). The war highlights the sorry state of the world’s patent laws.
The typical argument for patents is that they encourage innovation. By protecting a person’s potential invention from being copied, they increase the reward for coming up with an invention. But the other side of this coin is that they discourage innovation too, by increasing the cost of improving on or incorporating other innovations into your own work. If you want to stand on the shoulders of giants, you’ll have to cough up.
The Apple/Samsung patent war is an example of patents at their worst. There’s a big deadweight loss associated with lawsuits and restrictions on commerce. And most of the challenges are completely spurious – should Apple really “own” the pattern of a four-column grid of apps on a tablet home screen, or the concept of a rectangular tablet computer? Apple and Samsung have created enormous value to a huge number of people, but in this case they’re acting against consumer choice. Like blaming gravity for plane crashes or greed for financial crises, it’s silly to blame the firms themselves. Fundamentally, it’s the patent system that’s at fault.
Patents are anathema to private property rights. A pattern or idea is non-rivalrous and non-excludable – unlike property, there is no opportunity cost to someone’s use of an idea or pattern. An individual idea is not scarce unless we make it so through patent laws. …
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