Patents and other intellectual property

[Reploid Productions]

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[Moral Libertarians]

Why is the government even required? The inventor can simply license their invention to others by means of private patents. This completely solves the problem you notice, by allowing the market to judge whether or not the invention will be successful.

The market will recognise the validity of private, and consequently not legally enforced patents, rather than simply ignore them... Why?

You're falling for the common impression, propagated (understandably) by governments, that anarchy = lawlessness. A system of private law will do the job much better and more efficiently - especialling since multiple competing legal codes can exist at once. And "patents" most likely wouldn't exist - they aren't necessary to foster innovation. That incentive comes from the desire to cut costs, improve efficiency, get ahead of the competition or just simple curiosity by an individual inventor.

[Trotskylvania]

The market will recognise the validity of private, and consequently not legally enforced patents, rather than simply ignore them... Why?

You're falling for the common impression, propagated (understandably) by governments, that anarchy = lawlessness. A system of private law will do the job much better and more efficiently - especialling since multiple competing legal codes can exist at once. And "patents" most likely wouldn't exist - they aren't necessary to foster innovation. That incentive comes from the desire to cut costs, improve efficiency, get ahead of the competition or just simple curiosity by an individual inventor.

Having private law defeats the point of having law in the first place, especially if there are competing legal codes. You think that right now is a legalistic and litigation nightmare, that'd be multiplied one hundred fold under any regime of private law. It's a terrible idea.

[Moral Libertarians]

You're falling for the common impression, propagated (understandably) by governments, that anarchy = lawlessness. A system of private law will do the job much better and more efficiently - especialling since multiple competing legal codes can exist at once. And "patents" most likely wouldn't exist - they aren't necessary to foster innovation. That incentive comes from the desire to cut costs, improve efficiency, get ahead of the competition or just simple curiosity by an individual inventor.

Having private law defeats the point of having law in the first place, especially if there are competing legal codes. You think that right now is a legalistic and litigation nightmare, that'd be multiplied one hundred fold under any regime of private law. It's a terrible idea.

Just because governments pass thousands of unnecessary laws and maintain a complex system of taxation and subsidies doesn't mean this complexity will exist in a private system. Extraneous regulations would raise costs for everyone involved; so what laws exist will be precisely and efficiently targeted to solve whatever problem they're aimed at.

[Andaluciae]

This is a tangent off the libertarian "seasteading" thread

While many modern libertarians are not fans of intellectual property rights, it seems clear that they perform a very important purpose in a capitalist economy. Specifically, they reduce the risk to investors when funding research and innovation. It's a basic truism that copying someone else's idea is cheaper and faster than innovating it yourself. Absent patents, any innovation would be up for grabs in the free market, and the firms that spent no capital to develop the innovation could, once they catch up to the lag with the innovator, produce the innovation cheaper, having not had to recover the R&D investment.

This creates a perverse incentive to not innovate and just copy others. Each individual firm acting in its rational self-interest would, however, create an aggregate diseconomy, with R&D and innovation drying up because the competitive costs are just too great. In the face of such clear market failure, I don't see how any reasonable person could be opposed to patents, of all things.

That's why patents should be short term and specific.

[Trotskylvania]

Having private law defeats the point of having law in the first place, especially if there are competing legal codes. You think that right now is a legalistic and litigation nightmare, that'd be multiplied one hundred fold under any regime of private law. It's a terrible idea.

Just because governments pass thousands of unnecessary laws and maintain a complex system of taxation and subsidies doesn't mean this complexity will exist in a private system. Extraneous regulations would raise costs for everyone involved; so what laws exist will be precisely and efficiently targeted to solve whatever problem they're aimed at.

Law is not a simple creature, and when you have multiple competing standards, that is a . What if I have a suit against someone, but we subscribe to different private law firms? Which law do we use? Who decides this? How do they negotiate this?

What if an act is impermissible in one code but perfectly fine in another? How then does liability get determined?

[Moral Libertarians]

Just because governments pass thousands of unnecessary laws and maintain a complex system of taxation and subsidies doesn't mean this complexity will exist in a private system. Extraneous regulations would raise costs for everyone involved; so what laws exist will be precisely and efficiently targeted to solve whatever problem they're aimed at.

Law is not a simple creature, and when you have multiple competing standards, that is a . What if I have a suit against someone, but we subscribe to different private law firms? Which law do we use? Who decides this? How do they negotiate this?

What if an act is impermissible in one code but perfectly fine in another? How then does liability get determined?

I'd assume the victim's legal code is the one used, since initiation of force would always be illegal under this system.

[Trotskylvania]

Law is not a simple creature, and when you have multiple competing standards, that is a . What if I have a suit against someone, but we subscribe to different private law firms? Which law do we use? Who decides this? How do they negotiate this?

What if an act is impermissible in one code but perfectly fine in another? How then does liability get determined?

I'd assume the victim's legal code is the one used, since initiation of force would always be illegal under this system.

But what if the alleged assailant countersues, making them both the plaintiff in different cases. Do we decide the cases in one court under one law? If so, how do we choose? If not, what if we get contradictory verdicts?

[Moral Libertarians]

I'd assume the victim's legal code is the one used, since initiation of force would always be illegal under this system.

But what if the alleged assailant countersues, making them both the plaintiff in different cases. Do we decide the cases in one court under one law? If so, how do we choose? If not, what if we get contradictory verdicts?

Whatever works best. This is one of the features of the market - there is no set formula or process for anything - people are free to try different ideas.
I don't know precisely what would happen - I'm not a lawyer. What I do know is that something would happen, and determine the least costly outcome to society.

[Kazomal]

Law is not a simple creature, and when you have multiple competing standards, that is a . What if I have a suit against someone, but we subscribe to different private law firms? Which law do we use? Who decides this? How do they negotiate this?

What if an act is impermissible in one code but perfectly fine in another? How then does liability get determined?

I'd assume the victim's legal code is the one used, since initiation of force would always be illegal under this system.

Why the victim's code? Why would initiation of force be illegal under this system? I subscribe to a law firm in which initiation of force is perfectly legal. Who says I can't? How do we decide who the judge is? Our legal systems say different things, and my legal system says we try me under my legal system.

But what if the alleged assailant countersues, making them both the plaintiff in different cases. Do we decide the cases in one court under one law? If so, how do we choose? If not, what if we get contradictory verdicts?

Whatever works best. This is one of the features of the market - there is no set formula or process for anything - people are free to try different ideas.
I don't know precisely what would happen - I'm not a lawyer. What I do know is that something would happen, and determine the least costly outcome to society.

So you have no idea, but for some unknown reason, you know something better would happen? Sounds fishy to me. You haven't made your case to this skeptic.

[Veblenia]

Whatever works best. This is one of the features of the market - there is no set formula or process for anything - people are free to try different ideas.
I don't know precisely what would happen - I'm not a lawyer. What I do know is that something would happen, and determine the least costly outcome to society.

So you have no idea, but for some unknown reason, you know something better would happen? Sounds fishy to me. You haven't made your case to this skeptic.

The free market fairy strikes again.

[Xomic]

But what if the alleged assailant countersues, making them both the plaintiff in different cases. Do we decide the cases in one court under one law? If so, how do we choose? If not, what if we get contradictory verdicts?

Whatever works best. This is one of the features of the market - there is no set formula or process for anything - people are free to try different ideas.
I don't know precisely what would happen - I'm not a lawyer. What I do know is that something would happen, and determine the least costly outcome to society.

Yeah, except the 'markets' have already decided and it turns out the 'best system' is the sort of system we have now; one legal system, mandated and maintained by a Government.

Our current system is the product of centuries of experimentation, from petty "whatever the leader says is right" to laws being codified, to breaking now barriers and trying to make sure everyone's the same under the eyes of the law. Simply because you personally weren't there to experiment, or see the experiments being performed doesn't mean they didn't happen or weren't.

[Nazis in Space]

The market will recognise the validity of private, and consequently not legally enforced patents, rather than simply ignore them... Why?

You're falling for the common impression, propagated (understandably) by governments, that anarchy = lawlessness. A system of private law will do the job much better and more efficiently - especialling since multiple competing legal codes can exist at once. And "patents" most likely wouldn't exist - they aren't necessary to foster innovation. That incentive comes from the desire to cut costs, improve efficiency, get ahead of the competition or just simple curiosity by an individual inventor.

Please explain how this system of private laws is organised. Specifically, how it's supposedly organised in a fashion that can't be wholesale ignored by the big fish in the pond, simply by virtue of being big.

[Nazis in Space]

This is a tangent off the libertarian "seasteading" thread

While many modern libertarians are not fans of intellectual property rights, it seems clear that they perform a very important purpose in a capitalist economy. Specifically, they reduce the risk to investors when funding research and innovation. It's a basic truism that copying someone else's idea is cheaper and faster than innovating it yourself. Absent patents, any innovation would be up for grabs in the free market, and the firms that spent no capital to develop the innovation could, once they catch up to the lag with the innovator, produce the innovation cheaper, having not had to recover the R&D investment.

This creates a perverse incentive to not innovate and just copy others. Each individual firm acting in its rational self-interest would, however, create an aggregate diseconomy, with R&D and innovation drying up because the competitive costs are just too great. In the face of such clear market failure, I don't see how any reasonable person could be opposed to patents, of all things.

That's why patents should be short term and specific.

They already are.

[ZombieRothbard]

You're falling for the common impression, propagated (understandably) by governments, that anarchy = lawlessness. A system of private law will do the job much better and more efficiently - especialling since multiple competing legal codes can exist at once. And "patents" most likely wouldn't exist - they aren't necessary to foster innovation. That incentive comes from the desire to cut costs, improve efficiency, get ahead of the competition or just simple curiosity by an individual inventor.

Having private law defeats the point of having law in the first place, especially if there are competing legal codes. You think that right now is a legalistic and litigation nightmare, that'd be multiplied one hundred fold under any regime of private law. It's a terrible idea.

Erm, it already exists. It is called the United States, whereby semi-autonomous state governments and court systems pass their own laws, even down to the local level, and somehow society has managed to evade total unraveling. Of course, with the federal government now having leverage over the state governments, and the judicial branch being a bunch of activists, it doesn't work as planned anymore.

[AiliailiA]

Wait ... how is it possible to decide the worth of an invention "up front"?

Credit the author, sure. And pay them for the worth of their invention, but a flat fee if you meet some arbitrary criterion of a governing body is quite silly. We don't know the value of any discovery for many years to come. It might start a whole new industry, or it might be promptly superseded by some other discovery (based on it or not) and have no commercial applications at all.



Patents should absolutely be made public, I agree on that. And others should be able to use them.

I think my proposal (right to use patents for everyone, with royalties to the patent-holder at a rate set by a public authority) achieves the same end of rewarding invention/discovery, without a 'threshold' to be decided case by case of whether the invention will be or might be useful in the future. Some inventions are immediately obvious breakthroughs, but not all. Leave it to the market to decide which are good, and reward the holder of a patent which is proven to be good. Make the settlement AFTER testing it in the market.

I can see the merits of this, but there are also huge disincentives for inventors to make their designs public, if someone else can come along and refine it in 6 months or so, taking away their royalty stream.

If they don't register the patent they run the risk of someone else patenting it. Then if they want to commercialize the idea themselves, they're paying the royalties not collecting them.

"Refining" existing patents is a problem already. I don't see how the author's certificate scheme makes any difference?

A flat fee up front avoids this. It's not meant to assess the potential market value of a patent, but to compensate the inventor for their time. Given the number of patents that are sold by inventors without the resources to develop and market their product, this probably won't be all that much different for most people. The key change is that it releases pressures to keep their designs proprietary.

I'm having a hard time imagining how they would do that. Even incredibly complicated 'inventions' like a CPU chip can be taken apart and their 'secrets' found. Manufacturers actually do that; they can't directly copy the other company's chip but they can improve their own design from what they learn.

I suppose manufacturing processes could be kept secret for some time, and as long as the manufacturer could prove they'd been using it they would be exempt from a later patent ... hence an incentive to not patent. Hmm.

In any case, it is easy to imagine an inventor looking at the sort of fees the government is paying for good-looking patents and preferring to sell their patent privately. If you don't have a mechanism to allow that, they'll do it in secret and voila: same problem. No-one else can see the patent.

[AiliailiA]

I hope that Libertarian island idea goes ahead and all the libertarians move there. Then we can black hole their IP space and never hear from them again.

[Daistallia 2104]

Could you explain further?

Before one can create, one must be there first. The first person to come upon the resources is the owner, not necessarily the person who creates something with it.

I thought you subscribed to the non-initiation/no initiatory coercion principle? Homesteading depends on the initiation of force as one must initiate force in order to homestead, and thus the two are incompatable.

[snip]Trotskylvania and Moral Libertarians' discussion of private law[/snip]
Erm, it already exists. It is called the United States, whereby semi-autonomous state governments and court systems pass their own laws, even down to the local level, and somehow society has managed to evade total unraveling. Of course, with the federal government now having leverage over the state governments, and the judicial branch being a bunch of activists, it doesn't work as planned anymore.

How are the laws of the subdivisions of a soverign state in any way, shape, or form an example of private law?

[ZombieRothbard]

I thought you subscribed to the non-initiation/no initiatory coercion principle? Homesteading depends on the initiation of force as one must initiate force in order to homestead, and thus the two are incompatable.

I am anticipating an argument based on the idea that monopolization of land via lockean homesteading is an initiation of violence against other people who may want to use that particular parcel of land to achieve their own ends. I would argue it is a defensive action to protect your property that you have justly acquired through homesteading, so it is not an initiation of force. To deny persons of their justly acquired property is an initiation of force, as you are claiming partial ownership over anothers labor. (I know you will disagree, and I am sure neither of us will ever change our perspectives on this).

How are the laws of the subdivisions of a soverign state in any way, shape, or form an example of private law?

It is not an example of private law in the way that you are referring to it, but it is an example of how law does not have to be centralized or under the jurisdiction of a single authority, because our very own system is competitive in that states and locales compete for customers in the kinds of laws they enact. It is not private law in the libertarian anarchist sense, but it lends credibility to the idea that a society does not need universal law, the alternative being the unraveling of society.

[Robert Magoo]

Having private law defeats the point of having law in the first place, especially if there are competing legal codes. You think that right now is a legalistic and litigation nightmare, that'd be multiplied one hundred fold under any regime of private law. It's a terrible idea.

Erm, it already exists. It is called the United States, whereby semi-autonomous state governments and court systems pass their own laws, even down to the local level, and somehow society has managed to evade total unraveling. Of course, with the federal government now having leverage over the state governments, and the judicial branch being a bunch of activists, it doesn't work as planned anymore.

Law in the united states doesn't compete within a single jurisdiction.

[ZombieRothbard]

Erm, it already exists. It is called the United States, whereby semi-autonomous state governments and court systems pass their own laws, even down to the local level, and somehow society has managed to evade total unraveling. Of course, with the federal government now having leverage over the state governments, and the judicial branch being a bunch of activists, it doesn't work as planned anymore.

Law in the united states doesn't compete within a single jurisdiction.

A free market may structure itself the same way. There are some sectors of the economy that may be better off "monopolized" in the mainstream sense of the word.

[Trotskylvania]

Law in the united states doesn't compete within a single jurisdiction.

A free market may structure itself the same way. There are some sectors of the economy that may be better off "monopolized" in the mainstream sense of the word.

How do you know? Law is a public good; you can't internalize the costs and benefits. Which means that any market in law is going to be heading straight to market failure.

[ZombieRothbard]

A free market may structure itself the same way. There are some sectors of the economy that may be better off "monopolized" in the mainstream sense of the word.

How do you know? Law is a public good; you can't internalize the costs and benefits. Which means that any market in law is going to be heading straight to market failure.

Well let me ask you this. Do you believe that if law was privatized, assuming that private law is an impossibility and not achievable, do you think people will start forming roaming bands of shotgun wielding bandits raping and pillaging everything in their path? I mean, worst case scenario is that a rudimentary state appears in the form of court systems that control certain territorial areas. It might not even be the state, in that if the courts accept libertarian theory, they will not force people to pay for their services etc.

[Jello Biafra]

I thought you subscribed to the non-initiation/no initiatory coercion principle? Homesteading depends on the initiation of force as one must initiate force in order to homestead, and thus the two are incompatable.

I am anticipating an argument based on the idea that monopolization of land via lockean homesteading is an initiation of violence against other people who may want to use that particular parcel of land to achieve their own ends. I would argue it is a defensive action to protect your property that you have justly acquired through homesteading, so it is not an initiation of force. To deny persons of their justly acquired property is an initiation of force, as you are claiming partial ownership over anothers labor. (I know you will disagree, and I am sure neither of us will ever change our perspectives on this).

Diastallia's argument seems to be that homesteading itself is the initiation of force.
Further, I thought you said that it wasn't necessary to create via the process of homesteading. Where is the labor involved?

[Terra Malatora]

Force people to sell patents to anyone who wants them - at a realistic price, Intellectual property is a-ok.

I'm fine, eh?