What do you think?
Rate this book
Against Intellectual Monopoly
“Intellectual property” – patents and copyrights – have become controversial. We witness teenagers being sued for “pirating” music – and we observe AIDS patients in Africa dying due to lack of ability to pay for drugs that are high priced to satisfy patent holders. Are patents and copyrights essential to thriving creation and innovation – do we need them so that we all may enjoy fine music and good health? Across time and space the resounding answer No. So-called intellectual property is in fact an “intellectual monopoly” that hinders rather than helps the competitive free market regime that has delivered wealth and innovation to our doorsteps. This book has broad coverage of both copyrights and patents and is designed for a general audience, focusing on simple examples. The authors conclude that the only sensible policy to follow is to eliminate the patents and copyright systems as they currently exist.
306 pages, Paperback
First published July 7, 2008
63 people are currently reading
1380 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
July 25, 2019
A very good, tightly-reasoned case against copyrights and patents.
November 2, 2008
This book has many strengths. It is quite thorough. You can find it for free on-line (rightly so). It's packed with terrific history on patents, beginning with their inception as a royal privilege (sister of the trading company).
The book wears a bit thin, as arguments are repeated in slightly different formulations.
Also, as the authors catalog just about every reason to get rid of patents, it should come as no surprise that some fall short.
They do succeed in their overarching point: dispelling the myth that there exists positive evidence that patents are a necessary evil.
They deserve credit for taking on the Pharma industry, which provides the toughest nut to crack for the anti-patent movement. This chapter was less than convincing in its logic -- though filled with excellent historical factoids on innovation in medicine -- but they do come up with a very creative alternative to patents to maintain the profit incentive for medical innovation.
At the end of the day, they had me convinced that 95% of the time patents are completely unnecessary, and in the remaining 5%, their value could be replicated by some other institution that didn't carry such high residual costs.
Not bad.
The book wears a bit thin, as arguments are repeated in slightly different formulations.
Also, as the authors catalog just about every reason to get rid of patents, it should come as no surprise that some fall short.
They do succeed in their overarching point: dispelling the myth that there exists positive evidence that patents are a necessary evil.
They deserve credit for taking on the Pharma industry, which provides the toughest nut to crack for the anti-patent movement. This chapter was less than convincing in its logic -- though filled with excellent historical factoids on innovation in medicine -- but they do come up with a very creative alternative to patents to maintain the profit incentive for medical innovation.
At the end of the day, they had me convinced that 95% of the time patents are completely unnecessary, and in the remaining 5%, their value could be replicated by some other institution that didn't carry such high residual costs.
Not bad.
January 30, 2021
Questo libro mi interessava molto, perché mi sembra che non ci sia un gran dibattito sulla "proprietà intellettuale" (cioè brevetti e copyright), la cui sensatezza e ragione d'essere viene data per scontata (almeno per i brevetti, in realtà sul copyright mi è capitato in passato di leggere delle critiche).
L'approccio alla base del ragionamento degli autori è che la concorrenza è meglio del monopolio (considerando il brevetto e il copyright un "monopolio" di un'idea).
Offrono davvero molte argomentazioni a favore della loro tesi, tra l'altro puntando molto su dati ed esempi concreti e reali, ma non escludo che si sia fatto cherry picking e mi riprometto di leggere qualcosa di segno opposto in futuro.
Scorrevole e quasi sempre chiaro, lo consiglio a chi fosse curioso sull'argomento.
L'approccio alla base del ragionamento degli autori è che la concorrenza è meglio del monopolio (considerando il brevetto e il copyright un "monopolio" di un'idea).
Offrono davvero molte argomentazioni a favore della loro tesi, tra l'altro puntando molto su dati ed esempi concreti e reali, ma non escludo che si sia fatto cherry picking e mi riprometto di leggere qualcosa di segno opposto in futuro.
Scorrevole e quasi sempre chiaro, lo consiglio a chi fosse curioso sull'argomento.
January 13, 2011
2.5
I was pretty disappointed with this book. I actually found the overall argument of the book quite compelling, and within the book, there were several interesting arguments and examples. But it is very frustrating to read an entire book on intellectual property and not feel as though one received a thorough foundation in the subject. The book was so one-sided that I often felt like I wasn't hearing the full scope of the arguments. Many of the arguments seemed to be based on the single study that backed up the authors' argument, while I am sure there are contradictory studies that were not mentioned. Finally, for what it's worth, this book was quite poorly written.
I was pretty disappointed with this book. I actually found the overall argument of the book quite compelling, and within the book, there were several interesting arguments and examples. But it is very frustrating to read an entire book on intellectual property and not feel as though one received a thorough foundation in the subject. The book was so one-sided that I often felt like I wasn't hearing the full scope of the arguments. Many of the arguments seemed to be based on the single study that backed up the authors' argument, while I am sure there are contradictory studies that were not mentioned. Finally, for what it's worth, this book was quite poorly written.
June 14, 2010
With this book the authors powerfully rebut an idée fixe that seems to pervade most of Western society: namely, that creativity and innovation can only occur in a legal culture that places many restrictions on the kinds of innovation that are allowed (by granting patent applications that claim entire product classes), resulting in enormous amounts of money being spent on developing sufficiently dissimilar rival products -- that is, reinventing the wheel.
If this sounds as though there might be something odd about this idea, that's because there is. Apparently granting monopolies does fosters neither innovation, nor creativity -- rather, it stifles it. One could easily make the argument, after all, that an author or inventor will be encouraged to do nothing the rest of his life after (s)he has written a single best-selling work as you could argue the opposite.
One of the strongest conceptual arguments they offer is the (historical) fact that IPRs are really always only granted years to decades after an industry is established, by which time it has amply proven that the market offers adequate incentive for companies to invest in it. (What's more risky, after all, than setting up a company in an entirely new industry?) Once a company has gained size, they can use the they (and their employees) 'needed' patent protections, even though they had obviously managed to grow to their current size without protection, surviving the competition and mutual borrowing practices without major problems.
And after they've gained their protection, they can effectively rest on their laurels (innovation speed generally decreases, or at best stays the same as before), and force competitors who can't contribute to patent pools out of business, as well as keeping new entrants from establishing a foot-hold through patent litigation, which basically makes them legalized cartels. So once a few companies hold a large amount of patents, they will be in the position to threaten/sue out of business, every smaller competitor, after which no new companies will have a chance to enter the field unless they are already larger than those companies.
Furthermore, because of patents, rather than spending R&D money innovating a current generation of a product, either your own or a competitors, you will be forced to research until you find a marketable product that is not encumbered by a patent held by one of your competitors. This enormously increases R&D costs with very little benefits, except for the companies holding the patents.
The authors do a great job, using lots of empirical/historical data, convincing their readers of the fact that, in almost all cases, intellectual property rights are superfluous at best, and usually detrimental.
I found this book a lot of fun to read: it steadily chips away the foundations beneath a lot of arguments you are likely to have heard from the industry and lawyers/judges, who believe that a world without IPR is an innovation-less world. Read it!
If this sounds as though there might be something odd about this idea, that's because there is. Apparently granting monopolies does fosters neither innovation, nor creativity -- rather, it stifles it. One could easily make the argument, after all, that an author or inventor will be encouraged to do nothing the rest of his life after (s)he has written a single best-selling work as you could argue the opposite.
One of the strongest conceptual arguments they offer is the (historical) fact that IPRs are really always only granted years to decades after an industry is established, by which time it has amply proven that the market offers adequate incentive for companies to invest in it. (What's more risky, after all, than setting up a company in an entirely new industry?) Once a company has gained size, they can use the they (and their employees) 'needed' patent protections, even though they had obviously managed to grow to their current size without protection, surviving the competition and mutual borrowing practices without major problems.
And after they've gained their protection, they can effectively rest on their laurels (innovation speed generally decreases, or at best stays the same as before), and force competitors who can't contribute to patent pools out of business, as well as keeping new entrants from establishing a foot-hold through patent litigation, which basically makes them legalized cartels. So once a few companies hold a large amount of patents, they will be in the position to threaten/sue out of business, every smaller competitor, after which no new companies will have a chance to enter the field unless they are already larger than those companies.
Furthermore, because of patents, rather than spending R&D money innovating a current generation of a product, either your own or a competitors, you will be forced to research until you find a marketable product that is not encumbered by a patent held by one of your competitors. This enormously increases R&D costs with very little benefits, except for the companies holding the patents.
The authors do a great job, using lots of empirical/historical data, convincing their readers of the fact that, in almost all cases, intellectual property rights are superfluous at best, and usually detrimental.
I found this book a lot of fun to read: it steadily chips away the foundations beneath a lot of arguments you are likely to have heard from the industry and lawyers/judges, who believe that a world without IPR is an innovation-less world. Read it!
July 17, 2011
This was a stellar book on intellectual property. The writing is dense, penned by two economists and so the prose is thick and sometimes slow going. Not a book you can rush through; you have to work to grasp what they're saying sometimes. Occasionally, the book is poorly written, but for the most part it is pointed, but clear and firm. The authors work through the advantages of abolishing intellectual property rights entirely, which would include trademarks, patents, copyrights, and the rest of it. Their arguments are solid, clear, and devastating.
The section on patents was staggering. A corporation can patent any idea they have even begun work on. If a corporation thinks it might one day want to go into research for a cure or treatment, or develop a new sort of software, they can patent the idea even though they have nothing to show for it. The result is that anyone else who wants to develop the same thing or anything similar are then prevented or are forced to pay for the right to develop anything in a large swath of related ideas. Microsoft submits over 20,000 patents a month, protecting ideas that haven't been developed yet. All the other software companies do the same.
I found the first half of the book better than the second, where the authors begin to dig into deep economic language to develop their proposal. The first several chapters are more interesting, because they are direct interaction with what is going on in the world around us every day, and answering objections, and demonstrating their thesis with real-world examples from history. Highly recommended.
The section on patents was staggering. A corporation can patent any idea they have even begun work on. If a corporation thinks it might one day want to go into research for a cure or treatment, or develop a new sort of software, they can patent the idea even though they have nothing to show for it. The result is that anyone else who wants to develop the same thing or anything similar are then prevented or are forced to pay for the right to develop anything in a large swath of related ideas. Microsoft submits over 20,000 patents a month, protecting ideas that haven't been developed yet. All the other software companies do the same.
I found the first half of the book better than the second, where the authors begin to dig into deep economic language to develop their proposal. The first several chapters are more interesting, because they are direct interaction with what is going on in the world around us every day, and answering objections, and demonstrating their thesis with real-world examples from history. Highly recommended.
October 18, 2021
Overview:
Intellectual property rights are an exclusive right, a monopoly, over an abstract idea. A monopoly’s modus operandi is to create artificial scarcity, resulting in higher prices. Purposely being inefficient. To obtain a monopoly requires government support, which leads to favorable treatment such as increased wealth which is taken from the rest of society, by preventing entry and blocking innovation. Competition within ideas promotes their spread as any improvement can be used by others, including the original innovator. But a monopoly is against competition. The problem is not with having property over an individual copy of an idea. The problem is having property of other people’s copies of the idea.
Copying was made easy by the printing press. Copyright was originally an instrument of government censorship, rather than protecting innovators or spreading ideas. Royal and religious authority were to decide what could and could not be printed. Then patents came to be used, but as a tax instrument. Copyright and patents were obtained by bribing royal power for use of monopoly power. Before Parliament took over the monopoly system from the monarchy, the monarchy was able to sell a monopoly for any product. Under Parliament, monopolies became temporary and restricted to actual innovators.
Although innovators deserve compensation as few people would innovate for nothing, it does not mean granting a monopoly is an appropriate response. New ideas are usually a by-product of the innovator’s routine activity. Patents often come way after the innovation. Derived from legal resources and used to maintain the obtained fortune, and used to hurt competitors which also hurts economic progress. A legal monopoly engages in rent-seeking behavior as they suppress competition while obtaining special privileges. Having a monopoly is beneficial to the monopolist as that means there is no need to compete with imitators or customers.
Those who support or disagree with intellectual property, share the understanding that it requires an appropriate mixture of using existing ideas while providing an incentive for creating new ideas. Those who support intellectual property rights want more profit for innovators, while opponents consider the profits already too high. Some protection can be beneficial, but further protection does not provide benefits. Transactions do occur in the absence of legal rights, but markets work best with clearly defined property rights. What is need is protection for the innovator and those who legitimately obtained a copy. Protecting the innovator encourages innovation. Protecting the customers of bought copies encourages diffusion and improvements.
If property can arbitrary be taken away, there is little reason to produce or acquire wealth. Property rights over physical products promotes competition. Property rights over ideas leads to monopoly for it is a right over what the customer can and cannot do with the property. Intellectual property rights favor the rights of ownership of an abstract idea over the right of ownership of the copies of the idea.
Competition can divide profits so much that there will not be an incentive to innovate. A market failure in which intervention would be an alternative but monopoly power is not an appropriate response. When the innovation is good and copies are easy to make, there will be many imitators of the innovator. Many firms enter too quickly which causes prices fall and many firms to make losses, thereby leaving the market. What competition does is remove inefficient firms and thereby produce a social benefit. For imitators to pick only winners to imitate would not be very profitable as winners are a post hoc account of those who are already leaders in the market and had already sold a lot.
Being first to innovate allows the original innovator to capture a lot of profit and market power before any imitator can imitate the product. It takes time and resources to reverse engineer a product. The original innovator can also sell enough products early enough at a low enough price to make the product not profitable to imitate. Not only do ideas take time to spread, but they are difficult to communicate. A benefit of not being a monopoly, is that customers are not dependent on the survival of the monopoly, thereby more willing to use the product.
When competitors are allowed to imitate, it creates collaborative benefits to competition. Even the original innovator benefits from other competitors advances. Sharing information increases the chances that the competitors will make further innovations, that the original innovator can utilize and benefit from. The benefits of competitors leapfrogging innovations, and thereby reducing major costs, are far above what could be earned as a monopoly. Having a free market for a product does not mean not paying for it. Free market means anyone can use the product, but still needs to pay a price for the distribution.
Patents arise in industries that have emerged and matured on their own terms. When an industry is growing there are many opportunities to profit. The problem is when power and opportunities from innovations diminish, thereby raising the value of monopoly power. As innovative opportunities diminish, lobbying efforts for monopoly power increase and often succeed.
There are no so many patents out there that it has become impossible not to infringe on a patent. That means that firms need to prepare for legal costs. This makes innovations risky. Many patents are obtained not to be used, but to prevent potential legal disputes. Spending resources to obtain and hold defensive patents. Rather than patents facilitating innovation, they facilitate a market for patents and their needed legal services to trade and enforce them.
Patent abuse can be seen when the patent is not used by the patentee. There are submarine patents which are obtained by those who do not innovate but are meant to hurt the real innovators. Submarine patents file useless patents and extend the application until an innovator comes up with a use. That is when the patent is obtained, for which the innovator would have no knowledge of the prior patent, but for which the innovator becomes an infringer. Although there were legal updates making submarine patents more difficult, they still pose a threat to innovation as the cost of the submarine patent can prevent the innovator from covering the sunk costs of the innovation.
Under a monopoly system, small firms work hard to innovate, but large monopolies work hard to retain their position. The difference is that the large monopoly firms have resources and connections that the small innovators do not. It is hard for small firms to enter any market that has incumbents with many patents as they restrict the options of entry. With the patent system, rather than small firms becoming larger, their aim becomes being purchased by an incumbent.
It will be difficult to change the intellectual property right system as there are many institutions that are in symbiosis with it. There will be collateral damage from just removing the system. Many companies have started to aggregate their patents into patent pools which allows all of them to benefit from the same patents without cost.
Examples:
Many iconic people who appear to have been exceptional innovators actually did not do much in innovation. Only after James Watt’s patent expired was there increased innovation in the production and efficiency of engines. Watt’s own engine design had a flaw that could have been rectified, but the patent on the fix was patented by another thereby preventing progress. Watt and his partner Boulton began their manufacturing operations after the patent expired, having made royalties from the patent before that. Staying ahead not because of improvements in product, but by exploiting the legal system with a partner who was close to Parliament.
The original exclusive right to authors and inventors comes from the U.S. Constitution. Meant to promote progress in art and science. During the 19th century U.S., American authors were under intellectual protection but foreign authors were not. English books were still read, and the English authors were still paid, sometimes even more than with the copyright. American publishers paid for English manuscripts before other were able to. Saturating the market with their copy, which prevented many imitators while keeping the price down.
The reason the copyright term lengths are very long, longer than the author or artist, is because they are not the beneficiaries of the copyrighted product. Copyright terms were lengthened to protect successful titles that were due to expire. Many titles were copyrighted to prevent their further publication, as their publication would have crowded out more successful works. Older books are unpublished and are more valuable unpublished than published. These titles are not likely to be found in the future.
Problems?
An eloquent read which facilitates an understanding of not only how property right work, but how competition works. The claims for intellectual property rights are not dismissed, but rather explained in detail.
The problem comes about to the solution of the profitability of innovations without patents and copyrights. The authors claim that there are alternative products that can be complimentary to the main product which can raise the profitability. That means that the market will have to figure out what those alternative products are. Some products may not have suitable for complimentary products to make them profitable, while the profitable complimentary can change the value of the core products. As in, the innovations with and without property rights can create very different products.
Intellectual property rights are an exclusive right, a monopoly, over an abstract idea. A monopoly’s modus operandi is to create artificial scarcity, resulting in higher prices. Purposely being inefficient. To obtain a monopoly requires government support, which leads to favorable treatment such as increased wealth which is taken from the rest of society, by preventing entry and blocking innovation. Competition within ideas promotes their spread as any improvement can be used by others, including the original innovator. But a monopoly is against competition. The problem is not with having property over an individual copy of an idea. The problem is having property of other people’s copies of the idea.
Copying was made easy by the printing press. Copyright was originally an instrument of government censorship, rather than protecting innovators or spreading ideas. Royal and religious authority were to decide what could and could not be printed. Then patents came to be used, but as a tax instrument. Copyright and patents were obtained by bribing royal power for use of monopoly power. Before Parliament took over the monopoly system from the monarchy, the monarchy was able to sell a monopoly for any product. Under Parliament, monopolies became temporary and restricted to actual innovators.
Although innovators deserve compensation as few people would innovate for nothing, it does not mean granting a monopoly is an appropriate response. New ideas are usually a by-product of the innovator’s routine activity. Patents often come way after the innovation. Derived from legal resources and used to maintain the obtained fortune, and used to hurt competitors which also hurts economic progress. A legal monopoly engages in rent-seeking behavior as they suppress competition while obtaining special privileges. Having a monopoly is beneficial to the monopolist as that means there is no need to compete with imitators or customers.
Those who support or disagree with intellectual property, share the understanding that it requires an appropriate mixture of using existing ideas while providing an incentive for creating new ideas. Those who support intellectual property rights want more profit for innovators, while opponents consider the profits already too high. Some protection can be beneficial, but further protection does not provide benefits. Transactions do occur in the absence of legal rights, but markets work best with clearly defined property rights. What is need is protection for the innovator and those who legitimately obtained a copy. Protecting the innovator encourages innovation. Protecting the customers of bought copies encourages diffusion and improvements.
If property can arbitrary be taken away, there is little reason to produce or acquire wealth. Property rights over physical products promotes competition. Property rights over ideas leads to monopoly for it is a right over what the customer can and cannot do with the property. Intellectual property rights favor the rights of ownership of an abstract idea over the right of ownership of the copies of the idea.
Competition can divide profits so much that there will not be an incentive to innovate. A market failure in which intervention would be an alternative but monopoly power is not an appropriate response. When the innovation is good and copies are easy to make, there will be many imitators of the innovator. Many firms enter too quickly which causes prices fall and many firms to make losses, thereby leaving the market. What competition does is remove inefficient firms and thereby produce a social benefit. For imitators to pick only winners to imitate would not be very profitable as winners are a post hoc account of those who are already leaders in the market and had already sold a lot.
Being first to innovate allows the original innovator to capture a lot of profit and market power before any imitator can imitate the product. It takes time and resources to reverse engineer a product. The original innovator can also sell enough products early enough at a low enough price to make the product not profitable to imitate. Not only do ideas take time to spread, but they are difficult to communicate. A benefit of not being a monopoly, is that customers are not dependent on the survival of the monopoly, thereby more willing to use the product.
When competitors are allowed to imitate, it creates collaborative benefits to competition. Even the original innovator benefits from other competitors advances. Sharing information increases the chances that the competitors will make further innovations, that the original innovator can utilize and benefit from. The benefits of competitors leapfrogging innovations, and thereby reducing major costs, are far above what could be earned as a monopoly. Having a free market for a product does not mean not paying for it. Free market means anyone can use the product, but still needs to pay a price for the distribution.
Patents arise in industries that have emerged and matured on their own terms. When an industry is growing there are many opportunities to profit. The problem is when power and opportunities from innovations diminish, thereby raising the value of monopoly power. As innovative opportunities diminish, lobbying efforts for monopoly power increase and often succeed.
There are no so many patents out there that it has become impossible not to infringe on a patent. That means that firms need to prepare for legal costs. This makes innovations risky. Many patents are obtained not to be used, but to prevent potential legal disputes. Spending resources to obtain and hold defensive patents. Rather than patents facilitating innovation, they facilitate a market for patents and their needed legal services to trade and enforce them.
Patent abuse can be seen when the patent is not used by the patentee. There are submarine patents which are obtained by those who do not innovate but are meant to hurt the real innovators. Submarine patents file useless patents and extend the application until an innovator comes up with a use. That is when the patent is obtained, for which the innovator would have no knowledge of the prior patent, but for which the innovator becomes an infringer. Although there were legal updates making submarine patents more difficult, they still pose a threat to innovation as the cost of the submarine patent can prevent the innovator from covering the sunk costs of the innovation.
Under a monopoly system, small firms work hard to innovate, but large monopolies work hard to retain their position. The difference is that the large monopoly firms have resources and connections that the small innovators do not. It is hard for small firms to enter any market that has incumbents with many patents as they restrict the options of entry. With the patent system, rather than small firms becoming larger, their aim becomes being purchased by an incumbent.
It will be difficult to change the intellectual property right system as there are many institutions that are in symbiosis with it. There will be collateral damage from just removing the system. Many companies have started to aggregate their patents into patent pools which allows all of them to benefit from the same patents without cost.
Examples:
Many iconic people who appear to have been exceptional innovators actually did not do much in innovation. Only after James Watt’s patent expired was there increased innovation in the production and efficiency of engines. Watt’s own engine design had a flaw that could have been rectified, but the patent on the fix was patented by another thereby preventing progress. Watt and his partner Boulton began their manufacturing operations after the patent expired, having made royalties from the patent before that. Staying ahead not because of improvements in product, but by exploiting the legal system with a partner who was close to Parliament.
The original exclusive right to authors and inventors comes from the U.S. Constitution. Meant to promote progress in art and science. During the 19th century U.S., American authors were under intellectual protection but foreign authors were not. English books were still read, and the English authors were still paid, sometimes even more than with the copyright. American publishers paid for English manuscripts before other were able to. Saturating the market with their copy, which prevented many imitators while keeping the price down.
The reason the copyright term lengths are very long, longer than the author or artist, is because they are not the beneficiaries of the copyrighted product. Copyright terms were lengthened to protect successful titles that were due to expire. Many titles were copyrighted to prevent their further publication, as their publication would have crowded out more successful works. Older books are unpublished and are more valuable unpublished than published. These titles are not likely to be found in the future.
Problems?
An eloquent read which facilitates an understanding of not only how property right work, but how competition works. The claims for intellectual property rights are not dismissed, but rather explained in detail.
The problem comes about to the solution of the profitability of innovations without patents and copyrights. The authors claim that there are alternative products that can be complimentary to the main product which can raise the profitability. That means that the market will have to figure out what those alternative products are. Some products may not have suitable for complimentary products to make them profitable, while the profitable complimentary can change the value of the core products. As in, the innovations with and without property rights can create very different products.
May 7, 2013
Last October I published a post about the article The Case Against Patents by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine. I had mentioned at the end that there was also a book, entitled Against Intellectual Monopoly. I am not finished with it yet but it is so strange, powerful and complex that I will talk about it in two parts. More later... It's a very strange book (and the authors have been known for their arguments for a few years now) because it gives arguments against intellectual property ("IP"). They are not always easy to follow. This is a book about economics which sometimes, often (but not always) confirms the intuition that there is something wrong about IP. Yes inventors, innovators, creators need to be able to protect their creation against thieves. Does it mean they should be given a monopoly (patents) or a right to prevent copy of their work (copyright)? This is what the authors try to address. You can now read my comments but I strongly advise you to read the book and its complex and fascinating arguments, even if in the end, you disagree with them! [Plase notice that my comments refer to teh free online pdf version] As a provocative statement, they finish their 1st chapter with: "This leads us to our final conclusion: intellectual property is an unnecessary evil". [Page 12]
One of their strongest arguments is the following: "It is often argued that, especially in the biotechnology and software industries, patents are a good thing for small firms. Without patents, it is argued, small firms would lack any bargaining power and could not even try to challenge the larger incumbents. This argument is fallacious for at least two reasons. First, it does not even consider the most obvious counterfactual: How many new firms would enter and innovate if patents did not exist, that is, if the dominant firms did not prevent entry by holding patents on pretty much everything that is reasonably doable? For one small firm finding an empty niche in the patent forest, how many have been kept out by the fact that everything they wanted to use or produce was already patented but not licensed? Second, people arguing that patents are good for small firms do not realize that, because of the patent system, most small firms in these sectors are forced to set themselves up as one-idea companies, aiming only at being purchased by the big incumbent. In other words, the presence of a patent thicket creates an incentive not to compete with the monopolist, but to simply find something valuable to feed it, via a new patent, at the highest possible price, and then get out of the way." [Page 82]
The following is nearly as strong: "The incentive to share information is especially strong in the early stages of an industry, when innovation is fast and furious. In these early stages, capacity constraints are binding, so cost reductions of competitors do not lower industry price, as the latter is completely determined by the willingness of consumers to pay for a novel and scarce good. The innovator correctly figures that by sharing his innovation he loses nothing, but may benefit from one of his competitors leapfrogging his technology and lowering his own cost. The economic gains from lowering own cost or improving own product, when capacity constraints are binding, are so large that they easily dwarf the gains from monopoly pricing. It is only when an industry is mature, cost-reducing or quality improving innovations are harder to come around, and productive capacity is no longer a constraint on demand that monopoly profits become relevant. In a nutshell, this is why firms in young, creative, and dynamic industries seldom rely on patents and copyrights, while those belonging to stagnant, inefficient, and obsolete industries desperately lobby for all kinds of intellectual property protections." [Page 153]
You can stop here! Or read additional extracts below. Or as I advised go to the book...
"The crucial fact, though, is that the following causal sequence never took place, either in the US or anywhere in the world. The legislative branch passed a bill saying "patent protection is extended to inventions carried out in the area X", where X was a yet un-developed area of economic activity. A few months, years, or even decades after the bill was passed, inventions surged in area X, which quickly turned into a new, innovative and booming industry. In fact, patentability always came after the industry had already emerged and matured on its own terms. A somewhat stronger test, which we owe to a doubtful reader of our work, is the following: can anyone mention even one single case of a new industry emerging due to the protection of existing patent laws? We cannot, and the doubtful reader could not either. Strange coincidence, is it not?" [Page 51]
In Italy, pharmaceutical products and processes were not covered by patents until 1978; the same was true in Switzerland for processes until 1954, and for products until 1977. [Page 52]
"While patent pools eliminate the ill effects of patents within the pool - they leave the outsiders, well, outside." [Page 70]
"Later in the book we talk about the Schumpeterian model of "dynamic efficiency" via "creative destruction." The latter dreams of a continuous flow of innovation due to new entrants overtaking incumbents and becoming monopolists until new innovators quickly take their place. In this theory, new entrants work like mad to innovate, drawn by the enormous monopoly profits they will make. Our simple observation is that, by the same token, monopolists will also work like mad to retain their enormous monopoly profits. There is one small difference between incumbents and outsiders: the formers are bigger, richer, stronger and way better "connected." David may have won once in the far past, but Goliath tends to win a lot more frequently these days. Hence, IP-inefficiency." [Page 76]
"We understand that the careful reader will react to this argument by thinking "Well, the AIDS drugs may be cheap to produce now that they have been invented, but their invention did cost a substantial amount of money that drug companies should recover. If they do not sell at a high enough price, they will make losses, and stop doing research to fight AIDS." This argument is correct, theoretically, but not so tight as a matter of fact. To avoid deviating from the main line of argument in this chapter we simply acknowledge the theoretical relevance of this counter-argument, and postpone a careful discussion until our penultimate chapter, which is about pharmaceutical research. For the time being, two caveats should suffice. The key word in the former statement is "enough": how much profits amount to "enough profits?" The second caveat is a bit longer as it is concerned with price discrimination, and we examine it next." [Page 77] There is a full chapter about Pharam, I will probably cover in part 2 of this article.
Jerry Baker, Senior Vice President of Oracle Corporation: "Our engineers and patent counsel have advised me that it may be virtually impossible to develop a complicated software product today without infringing numerous broad existing patents. ... As a defensive strategy, Oracle has expended substantial money and effort to protect itself by selectively applying for patents which will present the best opportunities for cross-licensing between Oracle and other companies who may allege patent infringement. If such a claimant is also a software developer and marketer, we would hope to be able to use our pending patent applications to cross-license and leave our business unchanged." [Page 80]
Roger Smith of IBM: "The IBM patent portfolio gains us the freedom to do what we need to do through cross-licensing--it gives us access to the inventions of others that are key to rapid innovation. Access is far more valuable to IBM than the fees it receives from its 9,000 active patents. There's no direct calculation of this value, but it's many times larger than the fee income, perhaps an order of magnitude larger."[Page 84]
"Notice, in particular, that patenting is found to be a substitute for R&D, leading to a reduction of innovation. In the authors [Bessen and Hunt]' calculation, innovative activity in the software industry would have been about 15% higher in the absence of patent protection for new software." [Page 92]
An example of extreme aberration in U.S. Patent 6,025,810: "The present invention takes a transmission of energy, and instead of sending it through normal time and space, it pokes a small hole into another dimension, thus, sending the energy through a place which allows transmission of energy to exceed the speed of light." [Page 101]
Arguments in favor of IP are known and quoted again by Levine and Boldrin... "In order to motivate research, successful innovators have to be compensated in some manner. The basic problem is that the creation of a new idea or design ... is costly... It would be efficient ex post to make the existing discoveries freely available to all producers, but this practice fails to provide the ex ante incentives for further inventions. A tradeoff arises... between restrictions on the use of existing ideas and the rewards to inventive activity."[Page 176]
More in part 2....
One of their strongest arguments is the following: "It is often argued that, especially in the biotechnology and software industries, patents are a good thing for small firms. Without patents, it is argued, small firms would lack any bargaining power and could not even try to challenge the larger incumbents. This argument is fallacious for at least two reasons. First, it does not even consider the most obvious counterfactual: How many new firms would enter and innovate if patents did not exist, that is, if the dominant firms did not prevent entry by holding patents on pretty much everything that is reasonably doable? For one small firm finding an empty niche in the patent forest, how many have been kept out by the fact that everything they wanted to use or produce was already patented but not licensed? Second, people arguing that patents are good for small firms do not realize that, because of the patent system, most small firms in these sectors are forced to set themselves up as one-idea companies, aiming only at being purchased by the big incumbent. In other words, the presence of a patent thicket creates an incentive not to compete with the monopolist, but to simply find something valuable to feed it, via a new patent, at the highest possible price, and then get out of the way." [Page 82]
The following is nearly as strong: "The incentive to share information is especially strong in the early stages of an industry, when innovation is fast and furious. In these early stages, capacity constraints are binding, so cost reductions of competitors do not lower industry price, as the latter is completely determined by the willingness of consumers to pay for a novel and scarce good. The innovator correctly figures that by sharing his innovation he loses nothing, but may benefit from one of his competitors leapfrogging his technology and lowering his own cost. The economic gains from lowering own cost or improving own product, when capacity constraints are binding, are so large that they easily dwarf the gains from monopoly pricing. It is only when an industry is mature, cost-reducing or quality improving innovations are harder to come around, and productive capacity is no longer a constraint on demand that monopoly profits become relevant. In a nutshell, this is why firms in young, creative, and dynamic industries seldom rely on patents and copyrights, while those belonging to stagnant, inefficient, and obsolete industries desperately lobby for all kinds of intellectual property protections." [Page 153]
You can stop here! Or read additional extracts below. Or as I advised go to the book...
"The crucial fact, though, is that the following causal sequence never took place, either in the US or anywhere in the world. The legislative branch passed a bill saying "patent protection is extended to inventions carried out in the area X", where X was a yet un-developed area of economic activity. A few months, years, or even decades after the bill was passed, inventions surged in area X, which quickly turned into a new, innovative and booming industry. In fact, patentability always came after the industry had already emerged and matured on its own terms. A somewhat stronger test, which we owe to a doubtful reader of our work, is the following: can anyone mention even one single case of a new industry emerging due to the protection of existing patent laws? We cannot, and the doubtful reader could not either. Strange coincidence, is it not?" [Page 51]
In Italy, pharmaceutical products and processes were not covered by patents until 1978; the same was true in Switzerland for processes until 1954, and for products until 1977. [Page 52]
"While patent pools eliminate the ill effects of patents within the pool - they leave the outsiders, well, outside." [Page 70]
"Later in the book we talk about the Schumpeterian model of "dynamic efficiency" via "creative destruction." The latter dreams of a continuous flow of innovation due to new entrants overtaking incumbents and becoming monopolists until new innovators quickly take their place. In this theory, new entrants work like mad to innovate, drawn by the enormous monopoly profits they will make. Our simple observation is that, by the same token, monopolists will also work like mad to retain their enormous monopoly profits. There is one small difference between incumbents and outsiders: the formers are bigger, richer, stronger and way better "connected." David may have won once in the far past, but Goliath tends to win a lot more frequently these days. Hence, IP-inefficiency." [Page 76]
"We understand that the careful reader will react to this argument by thinking "Well, the AIDS drugs may be cheap to produce now that they have been invented, but their invention did cost a substantial amount of money that drug companies should recover. If they do not sell at a high enough price, they will make losses, and stop doing research to fight AIDS." This argument is correct, theoretically, but not so tight as a matter of fact. To avoid deviating from the main line of argument in this chapter we simply acknowledge the theoretical relevance of this counter-argument, and postpone a careful discussion until our penultimate chapter, which is about pharmaceutical research. For the time being, two caveats should suffice. The key word in the former statement is "enough": how much profits amount to "enough profits?" The second caveat is a bit longer as it is concerned with price discrimination, and we examine it next." [Page 77] There is a full chapter about Pharam, I will probably cover in part 2 of this article.
Jerry Baker, Senior Vice President of Oracle Corporation: "Our engineers and patent counsel have advised me that it may be virtually impossible to develop a complicated software product today without infringing numerous broad existing patents. ... As a defensive strategy, Oracle has expended substantial money and effort to protect itself by selectively applying for patents which will present the best opportunities for cross-licensing between Oracle and other companies who may allege patent infringement. If such a claimant is also a software developer and marketer, we would hope to be able to use our pending patent applications to cross-license and leave our business unchanged." [Page 80]
Roger Smith of IBM: "The IBM patent portfolio gains us the freedom to do what we need to do through cross-licensing--it gives us access to the inventions of others that are key to rapid innovation. Access is far more valuable to IBM than the fees it receives from its 9,000 active patents. There's no direct calculation of this value, but it's many times larger than the fee income, perhaps an order of magnitude larger."[Page 84]
"Notice, in particular, that patenting is found to be a substitute for R&D, leading to a reduction of innovation. In the authors [Bessen and Hunt]' calculation, innovative activity in the software industry would have been about 15% higher in the absence of patent protection for new software." [Page 92]
An example of extreme aberration in U.S. Patent 6,025,810: "The present invention takes a transmission of energy, and instead of sending it through normal time and space, it pokes a small hole into another dimension, thus, sending the energy through a place which allows transmission of energy to exceed the speed of light." [Page 101]
Arguments in favor of IP are known and quoted again by Levine and Boldrin... "In order to motivate research, successful innovators have to be compensated in some manner. The basic problem is that the creation of a new idea or design ... is costly... It would be efficient ex post to make the existing discoveries freely available to all producers, but this practice fails to provide the ex ante incentives for further inventions. A tradeoff arises... between restrictions on the use of existing ideas and the rewards to inventive activity."[Page 176]
More in part 2....
August 9, 2011
I thought I understood Open Source philosophy but this book clarified it immensely. The authors are remarkable in that they practice what they preach. They posted the whole book on their web site. I wish our leaders can find time to read this book and take up the authors on their offer of free consultancy for assistance in legislation. Both the authors are "Distinguished Professors" of Economics and have done a wonderful job of presenting their arguments. They have anticipated their detractors and have provided the answers. Finally, they have provided a very practical way of abolishing patents and copyrights.
September 8, 2018
I recommend this book as a companion piece to Stephan Kinsella's Against Intellectual Property, because while that book lays out the case against IP from a theoretical, a priori perspective, Against Intellectual Monopoly attacks the subject from an empirical, a posteriori angle. This allows anyone interested in the question of whether IP is compatible with traditional property rights, and more importantly, whether it's a benefit to the economy as a whole, to actually examine historical data. Is it really the case that patents and copyrights spur innovation? Isn't it possible that we've created a massive bureaucratic drag on innovation that only lines the pockets of lawyers and protects large conglomerates from competition from upstarts? This book draws on studies of the recording industry, companies like Disney, and the history of patents to at least examine these questions, rather than uncritically accepting IP as a natural, beneficial facet of capitalism, as is so often the case.
I still think Kinsella's book is better, but these two books complement each other nicely.
I still think Kinsella's book is better, but these two books complement each other nicely.
October 16, 2022
It's a brilliant book! Forcefully argued, lots of data and case studies.
Edit: Reading it a second time, I gave 5 instead of 4 stars.
It is brilliant on many more levels.
1) It is one of the best applications of economic thinking to real-world practice that I know of. And it achieves all that without using much or any economic jargon (a tiny little maybe).
2) There are many insights in there that are a meta-critique of mainstream economic theory. The authors through their careful study of the subject find areas where the best economics of the century, J.A. Schumpeter, K. Arrow or Paul Romer, are wrong - it deserves to be read a key text in economic theory.
Edit: Reading it a second time, I gave 5 instead of 4 stars.
It is brilliant on many more levels.
1) It is one of the best applications of economic thinking to real-world practice that I know of. And it achieves all that without using much or any economic jargon (a tiny little maybe).
2) There are many insights in there that are a meta-critique of mainstream economic theory. The authors through their careful study of the subject find areas where the best economics of the century, J.A. Schumpeter, K. Arrow or Paul Romer, are wrong - it deserves to be read a key text in economic theory.
May 19, 2021
Do you think awarding people patents or copyrights is a good idea? Well then you should read this book where every chapter the authors say “you like patents? Well you’re not just an idiot, you’re holding all of us back. Get out of the way, destructive dummy.” In all seriousness, compelling arguments are made to defend a position which seemed absurd before I read the book. I recommend it.
April 21, 2012
They did their homework.
February 17, 2021
I have this glaring suspicion that Boldrin and Levine have no idea what level of a Pandora's box this has opened...Fantastic!
December 10, 2022
The book takes on Intellectual Property (to which they consciously refer to as Intellectual Monopoly per the book title) from a mostly utilitarian point of view. As much as I disagree with the approach to ethics this book takes, you can't deny that their case is nevertheless quite tightly argued, which is the type of book I like.
The upside of this is that we get tightly reasoned anecdotes backed up by historical and empirical data, overall showing little evidence for the necessity of any sort of IP, but plenty of harm. By far the greatest advantage I gained out of this book was learning practical anecdotes and arguments with which to dispel common concerns brought up when IP abolishment is mentioned.
They also have a central argument, which is that an industry thrives and innovates without IP, then once the incumbents are established and start running out of ideas, they lobby the government for IP protection as a means of cartelization and keeping innovative newcomers out of the market, and they bring up anecdotes illustrating this throughout the book.
Examples include the Watt-Boulton patent saga, whose villains spent more resources fighting to force competitors off the market than actually innovating, and used monopoly pricing (further proving that it truly is Intellectual Monopoly). The result of their antics was the suppression of steam technology until their patent ran out.
Benjamin Day's Sun newspaper mainly succeeded due to his innovative business organization, despite the fact that business ideas were not patentable. Today they are, and as a result we have Amazon suing Barnes and Noble over the idea of "1-click ordering" shows the ridiculousness of patents. This shows that patents are not only not necessary, but their application in practice result in absurdities.
Publishers pay a lot to be the first to sell a given book, as evidenced by authors making more from book sales in 19th century USA, where they had no copyright, than in the UK where they did, as well as by the anecdote of the 9/11 Commission Report.
Copyright law is also unenforceable, as illustrated by the 1902 Copyright Law in England, meant to curb sheet music "piracy". Several anecdotes abound of industries fleeing IP enforcement to places where it could not be enforced, such as small movie studios initially fleeing IP enforcement New York only to settle down in California, where IP on their equipment was not enforced.
The book is a treasure trove of this and other anecdotes.
As for the downside, the book as I mentioned above takes a utilitarian/conservative economist's approach to argumentation. This unfortunately results in a bit (although not too much) of mathematical economic theorizing, which was of no use to me or really anyone else (unless you're into that) and was a slog to get through. The same can be said for their solutions towards the end of the book, which apart from abolishment of IP as a legitimate form of property are not very interesting.
By far their biggest sin is committing total ethical suicide by taking a utilitarian approach to property rights. They argue as if property rights were nothing more than the best tool we have for "general prosperity". They take the view of engineering society, politicians the potter and society the clay, the very view that economists like Frederic Bastiat decried as immoral.
As a result they - like the Communists they call dumb in the book - are reduced to differentiating "good" property rights from "bad" property rights depending on whether it's "socially desirable", and then simply categorize property rights in physical things as "good" and IP as "bad".
A proper grounding in ethics would have helped see that the issue here is not that IP is a "bad" right, but that it's not a right at all to begin with, and therefore accepting it as a legitimate right is an absurd mockery of the Law and therefore necessarily results in the absurdities so skillfully presented in this book.
Overall I highly recommend this book as *the* book against IP to read, it has plenty of anecdotes which illustrate its points, too many to list here, and its utilitarian, practical approach - as much as I personally dislike it - promises to be highly persuasive and effective at dispelling any fears or doubts regarding the abolishment of IP that the average person might have.
The upside of this is that we get tightly reasoned anecdotes backed up by historical and empirical data, overall showing little evidence for the necessity of any sort of IP, but plenty of harm. By far the greatest advantage I gained out of this book was learning practical anecdotes and arguments with which to dispel common concerns brought up when IP abolishment is mentioned.
They also have a central argument, which is that an industry thrives and innovates without IP, then once the incumbents are established and start running out of ideas, they lobby the government for IP protection as a means of cartelization and keeping innovative newcomers out of the market, and they bring up anecdotes illustrating this throughout the book.
Examples include the Watt-Boulton patent saga, whose villains spent more resources fighting to force competitors off the market than actually innovating, and used monopoly pricing (further proving that it truly is Intellectual Monopoly). The result of their antics was the suppression of steam technology until their patent ran out.
Benjamin Day's Sun newspaper mainly succeeded due to his innovative business organization, despite the fact that business ideas were not patentable. Today they are, and as a result we have Amazon suing Barnes and Noble over the idea of "1-click ordering" shows the ridiculousness of patents. This shows that patents are not only not necessary, but their application in practice result in absurdities.
Publishers pay a lot to be the first to sell a given book, as evidenced by authors making more from book sales in 19th century USA, where they had no copyright, than in the UK where they did, as well as by the anecdote of the 9/11 Commission Report.
Copyright law is also unenforceable, as illustrated by the 1902 Copyright Law in England, meant to curb sheet music "piracy". Several anecdotes abound of industries fleeing IP enforcement to places where it could not be enforced, such as small movie studios initially fleeing IP enforcement New York only to settle down in California, where IP on their equipment was not enforced.
The book is a treasure trove of this and other anecdotes.
As for the downside, the book as I mentioned above takes a utilitarian/conservative economist's approach to argumentation. This unfortunately results in a bit (although not too much) of mathematical economic theorizing, which was of no use to me or really anyone else (unless you're into that) and was a slog to get through. The same can be said for their solutions towards the end of the book, which apart from abolishment of IP as a legitimate form of property are not very interesting.
By far their biggest sin is committing total ethical suicide by taking a utilitarian approach to property rights. They argue as if property rights were nothing more than the best tool we have for "general prosperity". They take the view of engineering society, politicians the potter and society the clay, the very view that economists like Frederic Bastiat decried as immoral.
As a result they - like the Communists they call dumb in the book - are reduced to differentiating "good" property rights from "bad" property rights depending on whether it's "socially desirable", and then simply categorize property rights in physical things as "good" and IP as "bad".
A proper grounding in ethics would have helped see that the issue here is not that IP is a "bad" right, but that it's not a right at all to begin with, and therefore accepting it as a legitimate right is an absurd mockery of the Law and therefore necessarily results in the absurdities so skillfully presented in this book.
Overall I highly recommend this book as *the* book against IP to read, it has plenty of anecdotes which illustrate its points, too many to list here, and its utilitarian, practical approach - as much as I personally dislike it - promises to be highly persuasive and effective at dispelling any fears or doubts regarding the abolishment of IP that the average person might have.
March 30, 2023
How is it possible to fill up 400+ pages (in the edition I read) with something that could've been said, well argued, and given proof, in less than 50? The *intention* of the book is half-decent, they claim a nice idea, but not for the right reasons. Leaving the political and economic discrepancies apart, this seems like a repetition of the same hundred words over, and over, and over.
I could not finish this book, and I'm not planning to, not even if they paid me to do it.
I could not finish this book, and I'm not planning to, not even if they paid me to do it.
April 30, 2025
This book was interesting but the furthest thing from a page turner I've ever read. Really interesting idea, I went in thinking I'd strongly disagree but I finished (most of it) agreeing with the idea that IP laws should change. The biggest takeaway was that despite living in a "free market" we have this massive government rule that holds back innovation.
September 14, 2020
This is a challenging book to recommend, but it absolutely must be recommended. Why challenging? Because I think there are a lot of things about the style and language of this book that will be off-putting.
On the level of technical writing, the authors have a tendency to provide long pages of multiple examples illustrating a single point; of mixing which paper or study they are discussing at any given time; or occasionally of not clearly identifying the relevance of what they're discussing to their overall point. If you expend some extra mental effort to keep a hold of all the information they're presenting, it makes sense, but they don't make it as easy as they could.
And on a discursive level, the authors' voice is one that will rankle a lot of people, especially progressive-minded people. There's some definite Boomer energy here, the phrasing or thought experiments presented are of a very 20th-century-white-academia slant, and most unfortunately of all, the authors liberally invoke a lot of specific language that will trigger alarm bells in a lot of people's brains - they talk about "free trade" and "innovation" and "competition" with clear positive valence, and for a lot of progressives those terms and others are powerfully negatively coded, so I fear progressive-minded people reading this will quickly conclude the authors are their enemies.
But if you actually look past the surface-level issues and the voice of the book, and engage with the data and the ideas presented, you'll find the book presents a powerful, sweeping, and compelling case that intellectual property is a serious social ill. The authors don't use the words, but they describe the ways in which intellectual property is a colonialist project that serves to project colonial power onto disenfranchised groups and extract wealth from them. They describe the ways IP is used to accumulate wealth and power and to maintain a stranglehold on that power, in a pattern that slowly and exponentially builds on itself, creating massive inequality. They describe the absurd excesses of the marketing and advertising industries; the way byzantine legal systems are exploited by the wealthy or the well-connected to attack smaller businesses or individuals; the capitulation of public legal bodies to corporate lobbies and interests; the systemic problems that allow and encourage all kinds of misbehaviour in the pharmaceutical sector.
In short, they describe a lot of the fundamental problems with what people have taken to calling "late capitalism."
And what's more, they make a convincing case from multiple angles that one of the legal system that enables and propels all this - intellectual property - not only causes great social ill, but provides very little benefit to society in return. They do not claim that IP is entirely responsible for the problems of our economic system - but it's clear, after reading this, that it's a system that supports predatory corporations to the detriment of almost everyone else. Thankfully, they provide a fairly wide-ranging list of thoughts for improving on the system, and ways to capture or preserve the few benefits IP does yield without actually keeping this noxious system in place.
There are certainly a few little issues here and there with the content of the book. I wish they had the self-awareness to address in depth the fact that the book itself is copyrighted, for example, though they only address this a few times in a tongue-in-cheek way. Some of the passages on the intersection of copyright and digital media would have benefitted strongly from case studies or even just thought experiments, since those seem like areas where readers will immediately start thinking of "what-about" scenarios that the authors never properly address.
But overall, stylistic issues and details aside, the overall argument of the book is powerful and compelling. At the very least I hope to see another author revisit this in more modern times, to engage with some of the changes we've seen with digital and biological technology. More importantly, though, I hope somebody, somewhere, is slowly building a movement to begin dismantling a system that seems to primarily serve the consolidation of power and wealth at the expense of all else.
On the level of technical writing, the authors have a tendency to provide long pages of multiple examples illustrating a single point; of mixing which paper or study they are discussing at any given time; or occasionally of not clearly identifying the relevance of what they're discussing to their overall point. If you expend some extra mental effort to keep a hold of all the information they're presenting, it makes sense, but they don't make it as easy as they could.
And on a discursive level, the authors' voice is one that will rankle a lot of people, especially progressive-minded people. There's some definite Boomer energy here, the phrasing or thought experiments presented are of a very 20th-century-white-academia slant, and most unfortunately of all, the authors liberally invoke a lot of specific language that will trigger alarm bells in a lot of people's brains - they talk about "free trade" and "innovation" and "competition" with clear positive valence, and for a lot of progressives those terms and others are powerfully negatively coded, so I fear progressive-minded people reading this will quickly conclude the authors are their enemies.
But if you actually look past the surface-level issues and the voice of the book, and engage with the data and the ideas presented, you'll find the book presents a powerful, sweeping, and compelling case that intellectual property is a serious social ill. The authors don't use the words, but they describe the ways in which intellectual property is a colonialist project that serves to project colonial power onto disenfranchised groups and extract wealth from them. They describe the ways IP is used to accumulate wealth and power and to maintain a stranglehold on that power, in a pattern that slowly and exponentially builds on itself, creating massive inequality. They describe the absurd excesses of the marketing and advertising industries; the way byzantine legal systems are exploited by the wealthy or the well-connected to attack smaller businesses or individuals; the capitulation of public legal bodies to corporate lobbies and interests; the systemic problems that allow and encourage all kinds of misbehaviour in the pharmaceutical sector.
In short, they describe a lot of the fundamental problems with what people have taken to calling "late capitalism."
And what's more, they make a convincing case from multiple angles that one of the legal system that enables and propels all this - intellectual property - not only causes great social ill, but provides very little benefit to society in return. They do not claim that IP is entirely responsible for the problems of our economic system - but it's clear, after reading this, that it's a system that supports predatory corporations to the detriment of almost everyone else. Thankfully, they provide a fairly wide-ranging list of thoughts for improving on the system, and ways to capture or preserve the few benefits IP does yield without actually keeping this noxious system in place.
There are certainly a few little issues here and there with the content of the book. I wish they had the self-awareness to address in depth the fact that the book itself is copyrighted, for example, though they only address this a few times in a tongue-in-cheek way. Some of the passages on the intersection of copyright and digital media would have benefitted strongly from case studies or even just thought experiments, since those seem like areas where readers will immediately start thinking of "what-about" scenarios that the authors never properly address.
But overall, stylistic issues and details aside, the overall argument of the book is powerful and compelling. At the very least I hope to see another author revisit this in more modern times, to engage with some of the changes we've seen with digital and biological technology. More importantly, though, I hope somebody, somewhere, is slowly building a movement to begin dismantling a system that seems to primarily serve the consolidation of power and wealth at the expense of all else.
January 11, 2019
I came into this book feeling conflicted about intellectual property, but without much theoretical backing. The idea that someone else could "own" an idea in my head or on my computer felt wrong, but I also felt like there were probably benefits to society from incentivising creators.
I'm not conflicted any more. Reframing a patent or copyright as a monopoly granted by the government cleared up most of my confusion, then tons of examples and research showed me that there is little to no evidence that these monopolies even do what they are supposed to; increase innovation.
I've gone from someone who didn't really judge pirates, but felt squicky about pirating myself, to someone who believes that copyright is evil, and should be destroyed. I highly recommend this book to anyone else who struggles around IP issues. I doubt this book has the final say on my beliefs, but it at least made it clear what the whole debate is really about
I'm not conflicted any more. Reframing a patent or copyright as a monopoly granted by the government cleared up most of my confusion, then tons of examples and research showed me that there is little to no evidence that these monopolies even do what they are supposed to; increase innovation.
I've gone from someone who didn't really judge pirates, but felt squicky about pirating myself, to someone who believes that copyright is evil, and should be destroyed. I highly recommend this book to anyone else who struggles around IP issues. I doubt this book has the final say on my beliefs, but it at least made it clear what the whole debate is really about
July 29, 2011
I can hardly recommned this book highly enough. It is guaranteed to make you question your belief int he validity of intellectual property laws and is easily one of the most interesting and engaging ever written by a pair of economists. The auothors do a thorough job of refuting point-by-point the practical arguments laying behind intellectual property laws as well as demonstarting that the act of artistic and intellectual creation is rarely the work of a single, solitary genius but far more often the result of collaborative efforts by a number of people persuing similar lines of inquiry, the wealthiest and best-connected of which inevitably ultimately when the intellectual property rights regardless of how trivial their actual input to the overall process was. A must-read for anyone living in the digital age.
March 2, 2012
Not all economists think that are tendencies toward draconian "intellectual property" laws are a good thing. This book presents some great rational arguments against the trends we see in our corporate-influenced government and trends of thought.
January 20, 2018
"Yasal olarak hiç kimse, başka birisi bağımsız olarak onu keşfetmiş olsa dahi, patent sahibinin izni olmadan o fikri kullanamaz." Patent ve telif hakları hakkında farklı meslek gruplarından örneklerle eleştiren güzel bir kitap. http://www.freepatentsonline.com/craz...
June 6, 2009
This book has been selected as June 2009's Book of the Month by participants in the Freedom Book Club. I am reading it currently.
October 31, 2010
Finally a book that steps out of incumbent protectionist laws of west and tries to have a look at the economic damage current patent and copyright laws have done to the society.
Want to read
May 22, 2012interesting perusal in this long-debated issue, yet this time from an economist's standpoint
Want to read
June 9, 2019Free PDF copy of the book without table of contents available on author Levine's website: http://www.dklevine.com/general/intel...
February 5, 2021
"Fikri tekel, inovasyonun nedeni değil, daha çok onun istenmeyen bir sonucudur."
February 6, 2021
In a free-patent world, will we measure the power in Watts? Likely yes, because without intellectual property the ingenious will keep inventing and the others will benefit earlier.
May 14, 2021
Boldrin and Levin approach the topic of intellectual property from a market fundamentalist perspective common in classically trained economists. It is one of the bizarre but fortuitous scenarios where advocates of a system focus their concern on a facet of the problem and blame them for the poor results of said system, in this instance, free-market capitalism. Harkening back to Milton Freidman's lamentations of government intervention and 'distortions' in the perfect natural efficiency of unregulated capital markets, the authors astutely and comprehensively dismantle the case for intellectual monopoly as a social benefit (e.g. incentive for innovation, just reward for effort, protection from piracy). They correctly observe that the boss's/firm's ardent desire for market share compels them to coerce politicians and legislators to award them monopoly rights (deserved or not). This rent-seeking behavior is of course harmful to both markets and people, but unfortunately, the authors ignore similar corrupt behavior that capitalists perform in other domains.
What of international fruit conglomerates fomenting the first US-backed coup in Guatemala? Of tobacco companies lobbying legislators to obfuscate the health risks of their products? Of non-compete behaviors of energy and internet providers in the US? Or the regulatory capture of agencies like the EPA and FCC? The list of 'distortions' caused by capitalists obsessively pursuing profit at the expense of their customers and the world at large extends far beyond the sphere of intellectual monopoly. Of course, this book focuses on intellectual monopoly and provides the necessary work of categorically disproving its myths and foundations. But the authors are hamstrung by their unwillingness to challenge the system at large or to apply their rigorous debunking to other congenital weaknesses of the contemporary neoliberal order.
Numerous internal contradictions in the text exemplify this partial blindness. For example, take the quote, referencing one of the ways the US imposed new rents on conquered Middle Eastern countries via implementation of patent law:
"The old Communists like Lenin used to argue that monopolistic capital
breeds war because it needs the support of the imperialistic state to acquire
new markets and grab economic resources. As a theory of wars and as an
argument in favor of socialism, this is as dumb as it gets. It does no good to
either capitalism or democracy, though, to have rent-seeking monopolists
and their lawyers make dumb theories look reasonable to the alienated
masses of poor people by following dumb policies."
Boldrin and Levine are convinced that hawkish behavior in Iraq to support US capital interest, in this case, is an aberration. But any cursory survey of the history of US interventions abroad dramatically supports the 'old Communists'' claims (see: Chile, Panama, Guatemala, ad nauseam). Boldrin and Levine's ideological entrenchment exposes itself in the constant use of phrases like 'economic common sense,' 'this is simply true,' when addressing the merit of a free market system. Their skills in rigorous dissection, used so well in criticizing IP, are not deployed against other facets of the system which are taken for granted.
What of international fruit conglomerates fomenting the first US-backed coup in Guatemala? Of tobacco companies lobbying legislators to obfuscate the health risks of their products? Of non-compete behaviors of energy and internet providers in the US? Or the regulatory capture of agencies like the EPA and FCC? The list of 'distortions' caused by capitalists obsessively pursuing profit at the expense of their customers and the world at large extends far beyond the sphere of intellectual monopoly. Of course, this book focuses on intellectual monopoly and provides the necessary work of categorically disproving its myths and foundations. But the authors are hamstrung by their unwillingness to challenge the system at large or to apply their rigorous debunking to other congenital weaknesses of the contemporary neoliberal order.
Numerous internal contradictions in the text exemplify this partial blindness. For example, take the quote, referencing one of the ways the US imposed new rents on conquered Middle Eastern countries via implementation of patent law:
"The old Communists like Lenin used to argue that monopolistic capital
breeds war because it needs the support of the imperialistic state to acquire
new markets and grab economic resources. As a theory of wars and as an
argument in favor of socialism, this is as dumb as it gets. It does no good to
either capitalism or democracy, though, to have rent-seeking monopolists
and their lawyers make dumb theories look reasonable to the alienated
masses of poor people by following dumb policies."
Boldrin and Levine are convinced that hawkish behavior in Iraq to support US capital interest, in this case, is an aberration. But any cursory survey of the history of US interventions abroad dramatically supports the 'old Communists'' claims (see: Chile, Panama, Guatemala, ad nauseam). Boldrin and Levine's ideological entrenchment exposes itself in the constant use of phrases like 'economic common sense,' 'this is simply true,' when addressing the merit of a free market system. Their skills in rigorous dissection, used so well in criticizing IP, are not deployed against other facets of the system which are taken for granted.
June 3, 2024
I was super excited to read this one, only to DNF at 10% because the (first?) brief section on authorial copyright--specifically, on hypotheticals about what would happen to authors in a world without copyright--was so unbelievably ridiculous that I knew I wouldn't be able to take a single other word seriously. The argument put forth was so fundamentally myopic that it could only be called naïve at best and purposefully misleading at worst. Truly, when the crux of your argument is essentially that 'authors got by financially in the 1800s and earlier, so that means they wouldn't starve in a modern world with no copyright', I don't even know what to say; that is so utterly and completely false, historically speaking, and (more importantly) entirely irrelevant to today's world that it's honestly just mind-boggling how anyone could ever say it with a straight face.
Perhaps if the authors had stuck to the invention side of intellectual property instead of trying to talk about the art side, maybe I could've enjoyed this. But as it stands, that one little section of so blatantly not actually thinking through their argument killed any interest I had in reading whatever else they had to say. These two clearly have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to art and copyright, and that's what I was most looking forward to reading about, so adios.
Perhaps if the authors had stuck to the invention side of intellectual property instead of trying to talk about the art side, maybe I could've enjoyed this. But as it stands, that one little section of so blatantly not actually thinking through their argument killed any interest I had in reading whatever else they had to say. These two clearly have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to art and copyright, and that's what I was most looking forward to reading about, so adios.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews