The Patent Mess About To Get Worse

We just reformed the patent regime, but things got far worse.  So now, they will try to fix it again, by various means.  Patents are a private tax on the public, and quite valuable, so the players keep tweaking who gets to steal how much.  There is no incentive to get the intent of the Constitution right, only to get  theft pitch perfect.

Here is a dizzying summary of the problems at hand now, and the incoherent policy responses.  Of course no "responsible party" is advocating just scrapping the entire system and let freedom reign.  Now way.  Not when there are favors to sell.

In March 2011, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released The Evolving IP Marketplace: Aligning Patent Notice and Remedies with Competition, its antitrust policy review of the patent marketplace in which it unveiled the term “patent assertion entities” (PAEs) as a substitute for the derisive term “patent trolls.”

The author of the piece gets one point wrong

Yet I would still suggest that the paradox of PAEs ultimately exists in the nature of the U.S. patent system, not in antitrust policy. In the United States, patents are recognized as a legal instrument of private property rights. 

I'd trust Patry on this point, there is no such property right in USA law.

The basic canon that needs to be read by anyone interested in this topic is:

Kinsella on Patents   http://mises.org/books/against.pdf

Bodrin Levine on Intellectual Property Wrongs

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.htm

Although Patry is pro-patent, he proves that patents and copyrights are destructive in practice and why,




I thank Larry for this article...

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