Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Contra as patentes

"The main problem with the patent system is not software patents, low-quality patents, or patent trolls: it is the grant of “high quality” patents to actual companies that make products, who can use these patents as a protectionist bludgeon against their competitors.

(...) Patents are simply state-granted monopoly privileges that protect entrenched industries from competition. The US patent system alone imposes hundreds of billions of dollars of net cost on the economy every year. It restricts free speech.2 It reduces innovation.3 It distorts the market.4 It gives rise to cartels and barriers to entry.5 It impoverishes people.6 It gives rise to imperialism and corruption of free trade.7 It confuses and corrupts libertarians into supporting restrictions on free trade8 and multi-billion dollar taxpayer subsidies to private industry.9
The very idea of patents is evil to the core. Shame on any supposed advocate of human liberty, technology, innovation, or freedom that is in favor of this modern legal abomination. Down with patents
(...) As libertarian attorney Jacob H. Huebert explains in “The Fight against Intellectual Property,”
Boldrin and Levine have found that the pharmaceutical industry historically grew “faster in those countries where patents were fewer and weaker.” Italy, for one, provided no patent protection for pharmaceuticals before 1978, but had a thriving pharmaceutical industry. Between 1961 and 1980, it accounted for about nine percent of all new active chemical compounds for drugs. After patents arrived, Italy saw no significant increase in the number of new drugs discovered there — contrary, one supposes, to the IP advocates’ predictions."
Wenzel on patents in developing countries, by STEPHAN KINSELLA

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