Free-market economist Professor William F. Shughart II attempts to defend the need for IP in “Ideas Need Protection,” The Baltimore Sun (Dec. 21, 2009) (previously published in the Christian Science Monitor). Subtitled “Abolishing Intellectual-property, Patents Would Hurt Innovation: A Middle Ground Is Needed,” the piece suffers from flaws found in others defenses of intellectual monopoly […]
From Mises blog; archived comments below. Patent lawyer Gene Quinn has been sued by Invention Submission Corporation (dba Invent Help) in the United States Federal District Court for the Northern District of New York. The complaint … alleges that I have engaged in false and misleading advertising that has cost Invent Help business. They apparently […]
As Huebert notes in his post Fighting IP Absurdity: The South Butt Strikes Back, the saga of The North Face Apparel corp. vs. The South Butt continues. As noted on his attorneys’ website, The South Butt is the local case of a Missouri teeanager, Jimmy Winkelmann, frustrated with his classmates’ sheep-like following of a popular […]
In response to my Reducing the Cost of IP Law, my friend and ex-colleague (and mentor) Steve Mendelsohn, a patent lawyer in Philadelphia, wrote me the following. N.B.: Steve is not a libertarian but is honest and smart, unlike patent shills (he’s also an excellent patent attorney, if you need one). Here’s an edited version of […]
From Mises blog; archived comments below. No, not me. Michael F. Martin, a patent attorney with Drinker Biddle. The March 2010 issue of Liberty (which also features a letters exchange regarding my December 2009 Liberty article, Intellectual Property and Libertarianism) features the following guest reflection by Mr. Martin: Sane and sound — “The hallmark of […]
My article “Intellectual Property and Libertarianism” was published in the December, 2009 issue of Liberty; the March 2010 issue features the following exchange in the “Letters” section. [Update: See Roderick Long’s excellent response to the type of argument Yeager makes below, in his post This Self Is Mine. See also my post “Libertarians” Who Object […]
From the comments to Reducing the Cost of IP Law [archived Mises blog comments] (see also my related post The Non-Aggression Principle as a Limit on Action, Not on Property Rights): Russ: “…You are (in effect) assuming that only scarce (and hence physical) entities can be “property” in order to “prove” that ideas and patterns […]
I was interviewed yesterday by Mark Edge, as part of his “Edgington Post Interview Series,” for his Free Talk Live radio show, about my Mises Daily article, “Reducing the Cost of IP Law.” The interview is lasts about 35 minutes, and starts at 2:02:36 in the Jan. 20, 2010 show (MP3). Edge conducted an excellent […]
As I note in my article “Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way,” Mises Daily (Oct. 1, 2009), there is a growing clamor for reform of patent (and copyright) law, due to the increasingly obvious injustices resulting from these intellectual property (IP) laws. However, the various recent proposals for reform merely tinker with details […]
The upcoming documentary, Copyright Criminals, shows how copyright has outrageously criminalized the use of sampling, which has been disproportionately popular in hip hop music. In this, it calls to mind the racially disproportionate impact of drug laws on minorities… Copyright Criminals – Trailer from IndiePix on Vimeo. [Mises; AM]
