James Boyle, author of ‘The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind', weighs in on the matter at this link here.

(via Robert Levine) The invention of the phonograph was going to discourage people from going out to see live music. The introduction of music radio was a surefire way of killing record sales. "Home taping is killing music" screamed the magazine ads when the cassette tape was introduced to the marketplace.

From "Technology has the labels singing the blues, but artists are plugging into a new relationship with audiences," by Greg Kot in the LA Times.

The Economist asks whether health care reform in America could stop innovation in pharmaceuticals link here. The danger posited would be from price controls. It suggests no, based on a study that finds that price controls have actually promoted European drug innovation and that it has more innovation than the US and is drawing farther ahead of us.

This challenges the Phrma contention that US price controls would kill innovation link here. Its study identified the nationality of new drugs based on the head office of the developing company. But The Economist points out that companies have research facilities and markets in several countries so that the location of the head office of the innovating company should not matter.

The article also notes that Britain and Germany are exploring reimbursing companies based on drugs' effectiveness but doesn't address the issue of patents as a contributor to the cost of health care, instead suggesting price controls based on effectiveness would be a strong incentive for innovation and might help control the enormous increases in the cost of health care. That assumes the government agency administering the regulation isn't captured by the industry.

It is worth asking how the contemplated reforms in health care are going to control health spending and then to consider the role of monopoly, based on patents for drugs and on other measures, many under state or local control. The certification and pay scales of medical specialties which have limited the supply of primary care doctors as contrasted with specialists and the permissions to establish hospitals and other medical facilities comes to mind. Can anyone think of other monopolies prevalent in medicine?

For example, one was noted by Dean Baker who cites NPR's Planet Money piece on A Medical Mystery: Why Health Care Is So Expensive which focuses on the cost of medical devices like stents and instruments used in cardiac and blood vessel operations link here and transcript here. Baker then adds that NPR failed to mention the role of patents in making the cost of medical devices exorbitant.

It seems to me one of the most effective criticisms of our monopolistic system of health care and intellectual property is that until that system is reformed, we will not be able to control escalating health costs. That should be part of the current debate.

As previously noted here, I presented a speech in July at Mises University 2009 on "Intellectual Property and Libertarianism." The audio is available here and the video was just made available. It's below. As previously noted, this presentation was different than others I've done in the past on IP, partly because, as it for students, I tried to start from the ground up, and also to integrate the proper approach to IP with the essential principles of libertarian political philosophy. Thus part of the talk summarized my view of what libertarianism is, and then applied it to IP; this summary view of the libertarian framework was distilled from a more elaborated version, contained my chapter What Libertarianism Is, which appeared in the Hoppe Festschrift, Property, Freedom and Society. An article based on my speech is forthcoming in Liberty magazine.

[StephanKinsella.com cross-post]

As reported here:

AP: Speaking of technology, how has the band been affected by the digital turn the music industry's taken?

Cray: Not too many people get the million-selling plaques anymore and all that stuff like that. And a lot of bands survived just on selling records and didn't think about touring so much. And a lot of bands based their whole careers on just getting that one hit. But it has affected a band such as ours, but only in a different way. I mean, it would nice to have had the same kind of sales more recently as we had in the past, but we started playing in bars and as long as it's fun, we'll continue to do so.

[SK cross-post]

I was talking with Kevin Carson about the problems with the "contractual" model of IP "that so many people grab at in desperation" (for more on this see here and here). Carson said:

As Cory Doctorow put it, a computer is a machine for copying bits. If you put a cultural artifact into bits, it's going to get copied. And anybody whose business model depends on stopping people from copying bits is f*cked, plain and simple. As horrifyingly accurate a prediction as Stallman's "Right to Read" is of the copyfascists ideal world, I think it's about as plausible a threat as Khrushchev's plan to catch up with the West by 1970.

See A very long talk with Cory Doctorow, part 1; also Cory Doctorow, Microsoft Research DRM talk and Copying Is What Bits Are For.

[SK crosspost]

You can't make this stuff up.

As reported on Patently-O,

Earlier this week, the USPTO issued a design patent to Google that covers the "ornamental design for a graphical user interface [GUI] … as shown and described." Pat. No. D. 599,372. Design patent coverage is essentially defined by the images include in the issued patent. Here, the image looks roughly the same as the company's ubiquitous Google.com homepage. (See image below.)

To be clear, many patent professionals would argue that it is misleading to ever simply call this "a patent." Rather, it is a design patent. Design patents have severely limited scope, only cover ornamental designs rather than technological advances, and are very frequently found invalid when challenged in court. The USPTO has been granting design patent protection for screen shots and icons for many years. However, to my (limited) knowledge, none of those design patents have ever been enforced in court. ...

Dashed or "ghost" lines in the drawing indicate features that are not claimed. Thus, patent would be infringed by someone using an identical layout even if they replaced the "Google" mark with their own mark. You can note at the bottom that the design patent drawing is marked with a circle-c ©. That indicates that Google is also claiming copyright protection for this layout. In addition, in the design patent, Google indicates that it is also claiming trademark protection for portions of the layout and - perhaps - for the layout as a whole.

[SK cross-post]

"The Case Against IP: A Concise Guide," by Stephan Kinsella, Mises Daily (Sept. 4, 2009).

"The time is ripe to concisely restate the basic libertarian case against IP and provide links to some of the key anti-IP publications. read more…"

[Mises cross-blog; StephanKinsella.com cross-blog]

Despite a potentially crippling patent injunction against selling Word that Microsoft is battling on appeal, Microsoft, via a senior lawyer, is nevertheless calling for a global patent system "to make it easier and faster for corporations to enforce their intellectual property rights around the world". Yep--despite the big hit they just took due to i4i's patent, Microsoft is concerned about the "unmanageable backlogs and interminable pendency periods" of national patent systems, which have 3.5 million patents pending. You heard that right--Microsoft thinks more is "needed to be done to allow corporations to protect their intellectual property." What, do they want i4i to be able to get sextuple, instead of just triple, damages? To jail Microsoft board members?

Microsoft's lawyer repeats the tired old bunk about patents being necessary to promote innovation, yada yada -- "By facing the challenges, realizing a vision, overcoming political barriers, and removing procedural obstacles we can build a global patent system that will promote innovation, enrich public knowledge, encourage competition and drive economic growth and employment."

Two good things about this: (a) a global system would, possibly, reduce the number of patent lawyers; and (b) I was feeling sorry for Microsoft over the Word injunction, but now don't need to anymore.

Update: Let me add that I think this has no chance of happening. The patent lawyers in countries around the world would block it. The way the system works now, you file a patent application first in your home country, and within a year or two (depending on whether you use the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) or Paris Convention procedures), you can file corresponding patent applications in other countries or regions claiming a priority date based on your first country's filing date. But you have to pay filing fees, sometimes translation fees (which can be astronomical), local attorney fees, and local maintenance fees in each country you want the patent to issue in. Let's say it costs $15-20k for a patent to be filed and ultimately issued in the US. Well you might want to have the patent filed also in, say, the European Union, Japan, China, Brazil, Canada, India. So now we are up to well over $100k-200k. And that is not even global. Under a global system presumably you would file once and it would be enforceable in every country in the world party to the treaty. It might be more expensive than the current $20k for a single country but far less than cost of filing in multiple countries now. So presumably under a global system, you would file a patent infringement suit in the appropriate court, and if you win, you just take the judgment to local courts in whatever countries the defendant is competing with you and have that country's courts enforce the judgment as a mere formality.

This would make global patents easier and cheaper to get and easier and cheaper to enforce. Presumably people would want to use European or American local patent examining offices for quality purposes, so it would tend to put out of work the patent bar in "Southern" (third world) countries. You can expect a mobilized patent bar in most countries to fight this. Such proposals have been around for decades, and never go anywhere. Thank God for protectionist lawyers!

[Mises Blog cross-post; StephanKinsella.com cross-post]