Intellectual "Property"

Many people are uncomfortable with the idea of intellectual property. There are certainly some problems with some aspects of IP law in the United States. After all, whenever Steamboat Willie's copyright is about to expire, it seems like Walt Disney Company petitions Congress to extend the term that copyrighted materials are protected from entering the public domain. This is keeping other works of literature, where the author has long since stopped trying to disseminate his or her work, from entering the public domain. Another problem is the patenting of existing human genes.

There are other perceived problems too. How can "stealing" information (wherein the original owner still has the information) really be theft? While you don't deprive the original owner of posession of the information, you do deprive them of the compensation that the author wishes to obtain for that information. I think a great example is brand name versus generic drugs. When a company develops a new drug, they make a sizable investment in original research to first come up with the drug, then they have to go through in vitro trials, animal trials, and finally human trials before earning FDA approval (in the US). To provide independent researchers the ability to verify their data, they must publish the formula for the drug. To keep their competition from bring the drug to market at a lower price, they file for and are issued a patent. This gives them the ability to exclusively profit from their invention. They can then manufacture the drug and recoup their original investment. When the patent expires, other companies come in. These companies do not have to do any of the original research or run any extensive trials to make this drug. They just incur the cost of manufacture. For this reason, they are able to sell at a much lower price than the brand name drug. If the formula was used and the original developer had no way to reap profits from its development, what would the incentive be to develop it in the first place? Can you imagine the CEO and the Chief Science Officer in this conversation?

CEO: Let's spend millions of dollars developing this!

CSO: Sure! But will we be able to make a profit on it?

CEO: Not at all. The formula will be public information before we can sell any.

CSO: Sounds like a great idea!

Nah. Me neither.

The patent system allows innovators to profit from their innovations. Just as when a brickmaker bakes a brick, he can sell it to a user of a brick, shouldn't the creator of an innovation be able to profit from users of his innovation? Perhaps there should be a few tweaks to it, like, perhaps, extending the patent protection of products that must be approved by the government to have the clock start running after regulatory approval rather than after patent approval.

Copyright is another matter. As I said, many works that would have ordinarily gone into the public domain just a few tens of years ago now will not because of changes in the law. It is near impossible to obtain these works for research or even curiosity. After all, they're not popular, so they aren't being currently produced. Can you go out and find a new copy of Al Bowlly's music? It's copyrighted, but not very profitable, so it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to do so and do it legally. What do you think of this solution?

• When you initially get a copyright, you get it for 20 years.
• At the end of 20 years, you can extend the copyright for five years for a trivial fee.
• Subsequent renewals cost the same.

This should solve the problem of allowing Steamboat Willie to remain copyrighted so that Mickey Mouse doesn't pass into the public domain, but "dead" works that aren't being actively protected would pass into the public domain.

Intellectual property may not be physical or tangible, but it should still be protected. In the latest IP kerfluffle, my heavens. Patent the algorithm, not the number.