Last February, when CHUGHLETT asked “Should intellectual property exist?”, the result was one of TechRepublic’s all-time Top Ten most active threads.
https://www.techrepublic.com.com/5208-11183-0.html?forumID=9&threadID=169191&start=0
So, when I came across “The Pizzaright Principle” from Princeton professor Ed Felten, I knew I had a juicy subject on the line.
Basically, the principle boils down to this: The acid test for any argument towards an intellectual property right is applying that same right to the making and selling of pizzas. If the pizza version of the argument is absurd, so is the intellectual property argument.
To quote Felten:
“Pizzaright ? the exclusive right to sell pizza ? is a new kind of intellectual property right. Pizzaright law, if adopted, would make it illegal to make or serve a pizza without a license from the pizzaright owner.”
This, of course, would royally suck. If, say, Pizza Hut controlled the Pizzaright patent, it would be guaranteed market supremacy, either by denying Domino’s or Papa John’s the right to make pizza, or charging such and exorbitant royalty rate that Pizza Hut was guaranteed higher profits regardless of its efforts in the marketplace. All consumers would suffer from a lack of competition in the marketplace, both in the price and variety of pizzas available.
The Amazon.com “we invented one-click shopping” copyright issue immediately springs to mind in light of Pizzaright. God forbid that online shopping be easy anywhere but Amazon, because there’s no way the consumer would benefit from that competition.