
F.A. Hayek Denounces The Patent System - tenpoundhammer
http://www.impressmyself.com/post/36074833768/f-a-hayek-denounces-the-patent-system
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KevinEldon
I think 'denounced' might be a useful change to this title since Hayek made
this denouncement in 1944 and died in 1992. He hasn't changed his position.

That said, I appreciate the post and agree with Hayek in that patent law and
corporate law should be very carefully governed so that advantage isn't given
to the wealthy and the connected who can afford political and/or legal
advantage (I may be injecting a lot into Hayek's rationale).

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jlarocco
FWIW, Hayek was a "classical liberal." [1] It's more likely he wanted to get
rid of the laws creating patents and corporations, than he wanted them to be
highly governed.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism>

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tenpoundhammer
If you read the road to serfdom, you would see he was a very reasonable
thinker often making room for necessary intervention. He rarely makes a case
for out-rightly abolishing anything. Rather he carefully chooses to say that
we must be highly analytical and skeptical of all things the government does.
Especially in terms of regulation, taxes, laws, and programs.

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andrewcooke
btw, if anyone is interested, one of the best books i have ever read is
hayek's challenge (a bio) -
[http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo362...](http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo3624545.html)

i was not (and am not) a fan of his economics (at least as seen in current
cartoon-like views looking back), and cannot remember why i started reading
the book, but it really is excellent (very well written bio with a fascinating
subject).

and yes, he was a very smart guy who adapted his views as necessary.

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vijayboyapati
I like Kinsella's book on this subject which has much deeper critique of the
harm caused by intellectual "property", which is broader than the damage done
by software patents alone: <http://mises.org/books/against.pdf>

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smokeyj
I was just discussing the merits of IP with my dad, who happens to support it.
His reasons for supporting IP was mainly to support the "little guy" who
managed to come up with an invention.

I can't imagine living in a society where patents don't exist, and someone
comes along and says "Hey guys! Let's grant legal monopolies on ideas!". It
seems like it would take some serious propaganda to get people like my dad to
support IP.

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btilly
Ask your dad to cite some instances of little guys who benefited from the
patent system working as designed.

I would then direct his attention to the case of Robert Kearns. (See
<http://www.me.utexas.edu/~me179/topics/patents/case3.html> for basic
background.) Even though he was legally in the right and won his cases, after
legal fees, time, etc, he still lost. (He did win more than his cases cost,
but I've heard that, thanks to inflation, he actually lost money. And even if
he didn't, he still made considerably less than he would have if he hadn't
devoted his life to the lawsuits.

"The little guy" is a convenient fiction.

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brg
Think instead Dyson and Ben and Jerry's. Both were propelled as businesses as
a result of winning similar suits.

It is likely that Kearns found the case harder to win after waiting 12 years
to bring suit. But wiki shows that the Chrysler judgement was 30M, so we have
2.2M profit from the Ford settlement and likely 22M from the Chrysler
judgement. In my opinion this is much more than he would have gotten in
licensing fees.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns>

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001sky
_F.A. Hayek a prominent economist and political thinker... wrote the following
in 1944_

\-- Title Mod (1944)

