Musings on intellectual property, vol 1

I’ve been giving this topic thought. Here are some of the thoughs.

1. A world without property protection only works where everyone is equal and has what they need. That is not this world.
2. Some protection is needed for people so that others do not profit unfairly off of their ideas.
3. If the question of profit were entirely removed, then it wouldn’t matter, and information could be spread freely. This seems like the ideal state.
4. It does not seem right that someone gives the right to their invention to their employer, if they discovered it at that employer. A better system would be that the employer has the exclusive right to lease that invention for a certain amount of time, or while the employee still works at the company. After that, the employee should retain the right to their invention.
5. It is more likely for books to fall out of circulation if they remain under copyright after a certain amount of time (when it comes time to re-publish the book). Copyright currently grants sole ownership and use of material to the author for their lifetime + 20 years (or something like that). It should be more like 7, with maybe the ability to extend once.
6. 95% of patents go unlicensed and unused. This makes it seem like the barrier for use is too high. There should be a tiered licensing system that lets entities pay what makes sense for them, so like 1 dollar for me, or 20 million dollars for Apple.
7. If someone stands to make a profit off of my invention, I should get some money.
8. In a book of poems by Mary Oliver, there is one that takes the same structure as that of another poem by another poet. She gives credit to the poet in the book. I think this is a good model. I don’t think that other poet got any money. But if something you create is directly inspired by another thing, it is nice to give credit.
9. Part of me still thinks it is a bit ridiculous, that we think we can make things up out of whole cloth. There is no such thing. Everything is built on something else. Hidden inspirations always exist, whether they are mentioned or not. I think it a symptom of the radical individualism of our society that people fight so fiercely for “their ideas” when it would have been impossible to have them without the greater societal context in which they came from. The money thing is also a huge incentive to say “this was MY idea.”
10. Unfettered access to artistic creations for a low cost (e.g. Spotify) has been great for the consumer and not so great for the creator. This might be a separate conversation from property protection though.
11. I have not yet seen an argument for why patents spur innovation. I have only seen the fact presented as obviously true. Granted, I haven’t looked very hard.