Both Samsung and Apple entered into a legal battle over patent infringement back in April 2011 on three different continents. With such a short shelf life, if one or other company can get an injunction, it wins by just stopping its competitor getting its product to the market.
Moreover, millions of dollars are being shelled out on lawyers to fight each claim in the courts.
At the end the consumer pays, both by having less choice and presumably higher costs as legal expenses are passed on.
This is not the original concept behind protections of intellectual products (IP). You’ll notice that I did not call it “intellectual property”, because inventions and ideas are not “property” , although the likes of Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Merck and the rest of the hi-tech industry would like us to think it is, because with “property” come natural rights. It also allows them to bandy around words like “piracy” and “theft”. I look at IP quite differently. It is a private tax on knowledge, and therefore the worse you can be accused off the next time you copy and CD or DVD is to be called a “tax avoider”, which somehow doesn’t pack the same emotional punch.
Laws to protect copyright, patents and trademarks offend normal principles of the free market because they create protected monopolies, allowing patent owners exclusive rights to sell their IP, usually well above the price that it would be able to charge in a competitive market.
The rationale of this artificial market is that it rewards inventors and creative people, and provides incentives for companies to invest in new technologies. This is valid, up to a point. But if the cost to the community exceeds the benefits, then creating artificial monopolies can no longer be justified. We are getting to that point now.
Companies have successfully lobbied to allow genes to be patented and even business methods. In other instances, minor changes are being patented to sabotage competitors. Applications are even being made to trademark colors. Soon, expect "Starbucks Green", "Coke Red", "Gap Blue", and "T-Mobile Magenta" to be no-go colors to other manufacturers of consumer products.
In the case of copyright, this was extended retrospectively, so that rights exist for 70 years after the death of the author. For centuries great writers have been turning out book without needing to know that feckless relatives will be rewarded for their efforts well after their own deaths. This is the so-called "Mickey Mouse Protection Act", which succeeded after lobbying by the Disney Corporation.
Interestingly, libertarians are joining with the left to attack the current IP regime. A very good book on the subject is Against Intellectual Monopoly by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, which, as you might expect, is available free off the internet.
As my contribution to the debate, I would like to draw the collective attention of the world’s hi-tech companies to Albert Robida, a French author who illustrated his science fiction novels with many inventions that we would find familiar today. They include flat-screen television (the téléphonoscope), multi-channel cable TV, live telecasts from the front of distant wars, and if you look carefully at the drawing at the top of this blog you will see a man on a mountain top enjoying music coming from a device that looks remarkably like an iPod.
I’m sure that those hi-tech companies that currently hold patents for these inventions will happily hand them over to the feckless relatives of Monsieur Robida, now that they realized that they have ripped off these devices from their original inventor.
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