subject: A Government Granted Monopoly [print this page] A patent is a government-granted monopolyA patent is a government-granted monopoly. Everyone is head over heels in love with the idea of patenting something. It appears quintessentially American, that if you invent something you could have sole rights to earning off it. To paraphrase President Abraham Lincoln's own take on it, the patent system adds the fuel of self-interest to the fire of genius.
Fine. But it 's still a monopoly, and monopolies are not about genius and innovation. Monopolies are about maximizing the extraction of wealth and dominating the marketplace to expand economic power. Monopolies have the unlucky but all too natural historical result of becoming political brokers and power centers in their own right, further stifling competition and innovation.
This is something the proponents of the normal free enterprise system, as usually accepted by most, fail to take into account. Patent laws, whatever their plans, have come to serve monopolistic interests, stifling innovation. Patent laws constitute a undoubted underbrush of stumbling blocks that force newcomers to spend much of their dear start-up capital on barristers and legal research. What patent laws actually do, in practice, is guarantee profits for the already-rich and rich. That somebody not moneyed may benefit from these laws is totally incidental to the incontrovertible fact that these laws generally serve established interests.
How does society benefit?
Not by much, in fact. Indeed, the hackneyed little inventors are exactly those most harmed by current patent laws. The central and in some ways only justification for a patent system goes out the window when we glance at the exact aftermath of these laws. For piracy and intellectual property theft is as rampant as ever, despite even the purported billions that various industries claim to spend on combating such crimes. So crime is not forestalled or even discouraged. But it is the little businessperson or lady with a Better Mousetrap who is restrained.
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