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IP: Common Benefit vs. Motivation of Inspiration

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Innovation for the common benefit of society is admirable. Innovation for the personal benefit of its creator is human. Does society benefit more via lawful enforcement of intellectual property, to the profit of IP owners? Would the well of inspiration suddenly dry up if IP law were to evaporate? Or, would society experience a euphoric surge of advancement as every invention whether physical or algorithmic was reverse-engineered with amnesty?

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In reply to IP: Common Benefit vs. Motivation of Inspiration

Things would change if intellectual property law were scrapped, certainly, but it wouldn’t be either cataclysmic or utopian. That is, of course, unless the removal of IP law was very sudden and without regard to consequences. If we were to just cut the head off the intellectual property beast tomorrow, the immediate problems would be widespread at first. We’d at least put hundreds of patent lawyers at IBM out of a job.

Assuming that it was handled in a somewhat organic manner, easing society into circumstances where “intellectual property” no longer has the meaning it does now, the benefits would be more long-term than short term. In the meantime, there would be both benefits and growing pains. I’m sure the growing pains would outnumber the benefits from time to time, but that’s the nature of change: the same is true of keeping the system of patent and copyright law and continuing to add to it, as we have been, except that the end result toward which we’re moving is decidedly negative.

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