Economists Say Copyright and Patent Laws Are Killing Innovation; Hurting Economy

You can download their entire book for free from their website. Here's a direct link: http://www.dklevine.com/papers/imbookfinalall.pdf

Gee, you mean I didn't mention this one several times on these blogs already?

Then I'd better get busy.

No, I'm lazy, just look at everything Stephen Kinsella has written:

http://blog.mises.org/archives/author/stephan_kinsella/

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kinsella/kinsella-arch.html

Sorry Bob, but I tend not to follow links that point to mises.org so I probably missed that.

> ...I tend not to follow links that point to mises.org...

Understandable, but probably not a good idea. :) There is some good stuff there. I can see where it might get a bit overwhelming if you have any reservations concerning their theories.

Did you look at their "Against Monopoly" blog? Stephen Kinsella is one of their bloggers.

I'd say the best subjects on this topic I came across until know is Research on Innovation:

http://www.researchoninnovation.org/about.htm

plenty of economic studies suggesting these patents are bad.

On our continent (even our country!), UNU-MERIT once did a study on the effect of software patents on the economy and FLOSS in particular if I remember correctly, but I lost track of the report.

The best solution I ever saw for this whole problem (patent trolls, not me losing my bookmarks) is by the FFII:

http://eupat.ffii.org/07/p2parl/exam/

which in short reads: -Patents should be granted immediately after filing, without expensive and lengthy research of validity, thereby making it really cheap to apply for a patent -Those finding an invalid patent should receive a reward, -That reward is paid by those who filed the invalid patent in first place.

If that would happen, a whole community would make sure no bad patents would exist, decreasing the work of EPO/USPTO (EPO demonstrated against the high workload recently), and that community would be paid by the 'patent-polluters'. Nonetheless, it would still be cheap for independent (small) developers / inventors to receive patents.

Sander,

I didn't know that dklevine.com was a link to mises.org. :^)

But seriously, since the abuses of patent/copyright come up all the time, I am glad to see "Against Intellectual Monopoly" get highlighted for itself.