The Guardian has it pretty wrong in today’s opinion piece on intellectual property by John Sulston (with some piling-on by the guys over at Techdirt):
The myth is that IP rights are as important as our rights in castles, cars and corn oil. IP is supposedly intended to encourage inventors and the investment needed to bring their products to the clinic and marketplace. In reality, patents often suppress invention rather than promote it…
We live in an information-driven (and increasingly experience-driven) economy. I’d argue that IP rights are even more important than rights to physical pieces of property.
Granted, our patent system has a lot of problems. In particular, the US patent office has granted overly-broad patents on software and digital technology that has impeded progress. And in many cases, patents have been granted for inventions where it’s been obvious (to just about everyone but patent examiners) that the idea previously existed in the market. Let’s fix the problems, and get a lot more restrictive on what qualifies as an invention–but let’s not throw out the whole intellectual property system!
Time is our most precious commodity. If someone takes their time to build a house, there are few who would question that they have the right to be paid for their time investment. If someone writes a song, or a computer program, or a story, or finds a cure for cancer–shouldn’t they be entitled to the same? Even most communist countries have learned that property rights, including intellectual property, are the cornerstone of any modern market economy that’s driven by entrepreneurship and investment.
