econ0402
ECON 0402 Industrial organization
Intellectual Property Rights
Few hundred years ago, in the British Statue of Anne and the Statue of Monopolies, a new concept, called Intellectual property, was born. Intellectual property (IP) is a legal concept, recognizing the exclusive rights to the creations of the mind. Under intellectual property law, owners of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, artistic works, discoveries, inventions, and even words, phrases, symbols and designs, are granted certain exclusive rights. These rights commonly include copyright, patents, trademarks, trade dress, industrial design rights and sometimes trade secrets. Without the protection of intellectual property rights, incentives to engage in creative endeavors would be weakened. One of the main objectives of intellectual property laws is to “promote progress”. Society and the patent or copyright owner are mutually benefited by exchanging limited exclusive rights for disclosing inventions and creative works, which also create an incentive for inventors and authors to create and disclose their work. The thinking behind is that unless creators are legally entitled to enjoy total social value of their inventions, they will not have sufficient incentive to invent anymore. However, there are high cost associate with intellectual property. Not only will monopoly occur, but more importantly, impede the incentive at creativity. As a whole, not only consumers will suffer, in the long run, the whole society will suffer loss too. Hence, in view of the current patent and copyrights systems, instead of improving the system to socially beneficial one, the government should actually withdraw the entire system in order to create an optimal efficiency to the society.
Patent is used to recognize a man’s hard labour in creating a new, useful product or a process with industrial application at the present or in the future. Likely, copyright is a legal protection of a work giving to an
Intellectual Property Rights
Few hundred years ago, in the British Statue of Anne and the Statue of Monopolies, a new concept, called Intellectual property, was born. Intellectual property (IP) is a legal concept, recognizing the exclusive rights to the creations of the mind. Under intellectual property law, owners of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, artistic works, discoveries, inventions, and even words, phrases, symbols and designs, are granted certain exclusive rights. These rights commonly include copyright, patents, trademarks, trade dress, industrial design rights and sometimes trade secrets. Without the protection of intellectual property rights, incentives to engage in creative endeavors would be weakened. One of the main objectives of intellectual property laws is to “promote progress”. Society and the patent or copyright owner are mutually benefited by exchanging limited exclusive rights for disclosing inventions and creative works, which also create an incentive for inventors and authors to create and disclose their work. The thinking behind is that unless creators are legally entitled to enjoy total social value of their inventions, they will not have sufficient incentive to invent anymore. However, there are high cost associate with intellectual property. Not only will monopoly occur, but more importantly, impede the incentive at creativity. As a whole, not only consumers will suffer, in the long run, the whole society will suffer loss too. Hence, in view of the current patent and copyrights systems, instead of improving the system to socially beneficial one, the government should actually withdraw the entire system in order to create an optimal efficiency to the society.
Patent is used to recognize a man’s hard labour in creating a new, useful product or a process with industrial application at the present or in the future. Likely, copyright is a legal protection of a work giving to an