How IP is a property right, how it functions as a property right in a free market, and how legally, historically, and economically, IP is essential to a thriving economy and flourishing society.
Professor Adam Mossoff on patents and property rights.
In this talk, law professor Adam Mossoff explains Ayn Rand’s radical justification for intellectual property rights: that all property is — at root — intellectual.
Adam Mossoff traces the rise and fall of property rights in America.
There are widespread complaints today that the “patent system is broken” and that the “smartphone wars” and “patent trolls” are killing innovation. Yet patented innovation has revolutionized our lives today—tablet computers, smartphones and antiviral drugs are just a few of these modern marvels. How to make sense of this contradiction?
Illegally downloading creative content online is all too easy. Unlike stealing a physical product from a store, there’s no need to stealthily conceal the merchandise, avoid security guards, or worry about magnetic security tags.
An open letter sent to Congress about the Venue Act, which is another attempt to deny the rights of inventors.
In plain English, here’s the deal that Tesla is offering to manufacturers and users of its electrical car technology: in exchange for using Tesla’s patents, the users of Tesla’s patents cannot file patent infringement lawsuits against Tesla if Tesla uses their other patents.
With the future of innovation at stake, it is not crazy to ask that before we make radical, systemic changes to the patent system that we have validly established empirical evidence that such revisions are in fact necessary or at least would do more good than harm.
There certainly are bad actors, deceptive demand letters, and frivolous litigation in the patent system. The important question, though, is whether there is a systemic problem requiring further systemic revisions to the patent system.