It is clear to anyone who pays attention that IP is under assault--both institutionally, as digital copying, encryption, distributed information, the Internet, and the inherent impotence of IP policing make attempts to monopolize information patterns increasingly futile; and intellectually, as more and more people, especially libertarians--and especially younger libertarians--see the injustice of IP made manifest and obvious. There is a growing body of work that explodes the myths--moral and utilitarian, principled and empirical--of the IP proponents (see the works listed at the final section of "The Case Against IP: A Concise Guide"). There has been a noticeable and growing migration of libertarians toward the anti-IP position. I have lost count of the number of people who have personally told me they have seen the light on the IP cause in recent years. Among the radical and principled libertarians I know, there is a lot of debate about a lot of things--abortion, federalism, activism, "thickism," left- vs. right-, etc.--but on two issues there is a striking degree of agreement: these are anarchy, and intellectual property. That the state, and IP, are unjust, seem obvious to them after a little reflection. More and more libertarians are realizing that the case for IP being part of legitimate property rights is a hollow one that never needed to be accepted (see Have You Changed Your Mind About Intellectual Property?).

So it is no surprise that Objectivists would be distressed by this phenomenon. Not only are they among the most ardent modern advocates of intellectual property (in addition to Andrew J. Galambos [see Against Intellectual Property], and perhaps J. Neil Schulman), but Rand in a sense built her entire philosophical edifice on IP: to-wit, Rand incredibly said that "patents are the heart and core of property rights" and Objectivist law professor Adam Mossoff explicitly claims that "All Property is Intellectual Property" (see Objectivists: "All Property is Intellectual Property"). And so, realizing Rand's arguments for IP are deeply flawed, and that fewer and fewer people are buying it, they are starting to fight back.

Let's survey a few. I've already mentioned neo-Objectivist (?) J. Neil Schulman's logorights; I have pointed out problems I see in his view in On J. Neil Schulman's Logorights and Reply to Schulman on the State, IP, and Carson. I think some of the mistakes Schulman makes are echoed in the tentative IP views of Machan; a problem with both is that they seem to think that any conceptually identifiable "thing" is ownable. For more on this, see Rand on IP, Owning "Values", and "Rearrangement Rights"; my comments in the thread of the post Intellectual Products and the Right to Private Property; New Working Paper: Machan on IP; Owning Thoughts and Labor; this comment to "Trademark and Fraud"; Libertarian Creationism; also Elaborations on Randian IP and Objectivists on IP.

Another one was Objectivist IP attorney Murray Franck's defense of IP and his reply to my response in the IOS Journal, back in 1995 (I also discuss Franck's views in Inventors are Like Unto ...GODS... and Regret: The Glory of State Law). Here we can see glimmers of the idea that "all property is intellectual property"--or, at least, that IP is the most important type of right (just as Galambos held).

There is Greg Perkins's piece, Don't Steal This Article!", from 2006. I've noted deficiencies in his or similar arguments in various publications, such as Perkins on Pursuing Insufficiently Abundant Intangible "Values"; Against Intellectual Property; Objectivist Law Prof Mossoff on Copyright; or, the Misuse of Labor, Value, and Creation Metaphors; Elaborations on Randian IP; An Objectivist Recants on IP; "Intellectual Property and Libertarianism" (in particular see here and the section on Libertarian Creationism); Rand on IP, Owning "Values", and "Rearrangement Rights"; Libertarian Creationism; Inventors are Like Unto ...GODS...; Intellectual Products and the Right to Private Property; New Working Paper: Machan on IP; Owning Thoughts and Labor; and Objectivists on IP; and in media, I discuss problems with Rand's view at length on the Peter Mac show and at the Mises University this year; also The Intellectual Property Quagmire, or, The Perils of Libertarian Creationism.

Then there's Objectivist law professor Adam Mossoff who is writing a defense of IP, as mentioned in the Objectivist "Noodlefood" blog post An Objectivist Recants on IP??. Roderick Long informs us that "the Ayn Rand Society session at the APA is also devoted to intellectual property"--indeed it is, with the topic "The Normative Foundations of Intellectual Property: Two Perspectives," having as speakers Adam Mossoff and Eric R. Claeys, both of George Mason University Law School, and chaired by Allan Gotthelf (University of Pittsburgh), on Dec. 28, 2009 (sadly, I'll miss it, since I'm here skiing in Steamboat, Colorado. Wait, not so sadly). I'm eager to see Mossoff's paper (and curious to see what Claeys has to say), but suspect it will be built on the fallacies and errors noted in posts above such as this Objectivist blog post and Objectivist Law Prof Mossoff on Copyright; or, the Misuse of Labor, Value, and Creation Metaphors.

Also noted in Roderick Long's post is his upcoming Molinari Society IP symposium at the APA later this month (Dec. 29 , 2009), including Bob Schaefer's "Response to Kinsella: A Praxeological Look at Intellectual Property Rights." I've taken a look at Schaefer's piece, and it's not pretty. It's just a mess. Roderick Long ably dissects just a few of its glaring flaws here.

(Aside: Long's comments are really superb and insightful. A few comments. Discussing the IP comments of another author, Long writes, "a strong case can be made for thinking that Lockean principles must be substantially distorted in order to press them into service on behalf of IP". Long backs this up very ably. In the same article he makes an illuminating distinction between three conceptions of "capitalism" that helps to dispel the confusion among both right and left in addressing this issue.)

The Objectivist approach is mired in a number of problems. It anchors property rights to the idea of "creation"; it requires legislation, and the state; it believes in some intrinsic value and some property right in value; it advocates utterly arbitrary and/or unprincipled, utilitarian finite lengths for IP; it rests on an arbitrary distinction between discovery and innovation. In a world where we took the ideas of the IP advocates seriously patent and copyright would have to have infinite duration. And the gaps in coverage would be fixed, and the state's arbitrary exceptions fixed, such as the "fair use defense" to copyright. At present patent and copyright cover a statutory class of "inventions" and artistic works, respectively. Many logos, idea-patterns, "creations," values are not protected at present. These include: perfume smells, the fashion industry, food recipes, certain business methods, databases (unoriginal but useful collections of information), abstract ideas such as mathematical algorithms, proofs, and techniques and physical laws. Under the ideas of the IP fanatics, there is no reason not to grant state-monopolies to these patterns too. And the term should not expire in 20 or 100 years--does your property to your house expire after some time limit? And why the utilitarian fair use exception? No principled case for IP could tolerate it.

I would love to see libertarian IP advocates have to live in a world that truly implemented their IP views fully, consistently--it would be like a communist USSR stripped of its power to ape Western price structures, to ameliorate the effects of communism. They would either die out, as the material world was strangled by an impossible nettle of ghostly IP-rights tendrils, or they would cry uncle. Even today, one imagines the cognitive dissonance of Objectivists living in our digital age--cutting and pasting, linking, learning and reworking ideas of others--all the while maintaining that all the things they themselves cannot but help engage in are "immoral" or some such tedious nonsense. I think of modern do-gooder environmentalists--they must feel pangs of guilt while flying on a jumbo jet to a friend's wedding 2000 miles away, or to attend UN conference or job posting on another continent. They must wring their hangs in agonized guilt and indecision about whether to use styrofoam, paper, or a washable coffee cup. They must feel tremendous guilt whenever they discard a scrap of soiled napkin instead of recycling it. Environmentalist parents must feel terrible pangs of guilt at using disposable diapers (or they suffer by using cloth ones: either way, I am pleased by the thought of their discomfort). Likewise, when an Objectivist emails a vandalized picture of an apostate like Alan Greenspan to a friend they must be conflicted--wait, no, there's a fair use exception! Thank Rand for the State and its wise laws!

Addendum:

Book Essay: The strange world of Ayn Rand

Control freak

One striking feature of Objectivism is it outspoken support of intellectual property. A key scene in Atlas Shrugged is where metallurgist genius Hank Rearden is compelled by the government to hand over his intellectual rights to his innovative metal alloy, and Ayn Rand acted in kind. She passionately used the copyright on her works to bar people from forming "John Galt Societies", citing that the name John Galt is her creation and her intellectual property.

For a person bent on propagating her ideas to the maximum extent possible, this would seem eerily counterproductive. Stealing an object from someone is obviously depriving the original owner of his property, but copying it isn't. It may or may not be harmful to potential income, but that income remains potential, in the realm of the unprovable. This is a debate that incites extreme passion.

While Objectivists, libertarians and conservatives strongly agree on the principle of physical property rights, the picture is much more divided when it comes to 'intellectual property', a catch-all phrase for several different items, including patents, copyright and trademarks. In a landmark essay by Stephan Kinsella, Against Intellectual Property, argues that 'Intellectual property' is not only meaningless and harmful, it is in direct violation of the general principle of private property, and primarily constitutes a state-sanctioned creation of artificial scarcity, leading ultimately to poverty, not job creation and wealth.

The wider libertarian movement accepted the argument, put it into action (see www.mises.org/books) and moved on. Objectivists, on the other hand, maintain that what Ayn Rand spoke and practiced on the subject remains the unalterable truth.

(See also on this Jeff Tucker, If You Believe in IP, How Do You Teach Others?.

[Mises; SK]

This article from CNN is amazingly funny, and not in a good way -

Recession's latest victim: U.S. innovation

Patent filings fell in 2009 for the first time in 13 years, worrying Silicon Valley that it is losing its place as the leader in global innovation.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- U.S. innovation slowed this year for the first time in 13 years as the recession cut into budgets, and costs to protect inventions rose.

The number of patent filings in the United States fell 2.3% in 2009 to 485,500 from 496,886 last year, according to a preliminary estimate by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. That makes 2009 the first year since 1996 in which businesses and inventors filed fewer patents year over year.

"That's unfortunate because [patent filings] are a reflection of innovation," said David Kappos, director of the Patent Office. "Innovation creates so many jobs and so much opportunity for our country. It is absolutely key to our long-term success in the global economy."

Most blame the recession for the drop in U.S. filings. As a result, many companies are opting to hold off on bringing new ideas to market until the economy improves substantially

Read the whole article here.

Patently-O's reaction:

"I tend to attribute huge rise in patenting activity over the past two decades more to a perceived strengthening of the patent right and less to an actual increase in innovations. In recent years, court decisions and threatened action from congress may have reduced the perceived potential value of the patent right -- thus lowering demand. Perhaps now, applicants are filing fewer 'junk' patents."

I suppose when there is an astronomical increase in patent applications for the past decade-plus, any minuscule decrease is supposed to be from a lack of 'innovation', as though patent applications should be expected to automatically increase exponentially every year - just like housing prices.

So-called 'performance reports' from the Patent office going back roughly 15 years can be found here.

As I mentioned in Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way, in in In re Bilski, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) modified previous holdings regarding the patentability of software or business-method patents in upholding the rejection of patent claims involving a method of hedging risks in commodities trading. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court and oral arguments were heard earlier this month. This entire area of patent law is very arcane, but the main issues and the oral arguments are explained very well by the heroic IP-abuse reporter Joe Mullin in Bilski v. Kappos Oral Arguments: Supreme Skepticism Toward Method Patents.

Take a look at Mullins' discussion of the oral arguments--it's fascinating seeing the Justices grapple with the absurdity of patent law. A few choice excerpts below.

I suspect the Court will choke back a bit on software and business method patents--but not too much, as I argued in Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way. One reason is that although the law is, as the Justices seem to be realizing, completely unjust and absurd, it is the law. Or, as Bilski's lawyer said, "That's our system ... We do grant exclusive rights in exchange for disclosure." Yes, we do. And when you implement such an abomination, that's what you get: absurd, unjust results, such as granting monopolies on "fundamental ways of conducting business or organizing human behavior" (and yes, patents are monopolies, despite the shrill denials by patent shills and other pro-monopolists).

Excerpts from oral arguments:

Across the board, the justices indicated a deep skepticism toward the invention described in the patent application at issue, which was rejected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and describes a method for trading commodities. Some of the justices went even further expressing both a fair amount of disdain for the idea of granting broad "method" patents and a concern that ruling in favor of the petitioners would lead to patent grants on fundamental ways of conducting business or organizing human behavior. ...

Based on the justices' attitude during the arguments, it not only seems extremely unlikely that Bernard Bilski will ever get the patent at issue, it also seems clear that the court is poised to establish a new, and most likely stricter, test of what is patent eligible.

One after another, the justices prodded Bilski's lawyer, Michael Jakes of Finnegan Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, in search of some idea about where to draw the line. The thrust of the questions: Does absolutely everything fall within the domain of the U.S. patent system?

"So, an estate plan?" asked Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "A tax avoidance method? How to resist a corporate takeover? All of these are patentable?"

"They are eligible for patenting under section 101," replied Jakes, referring to the section of the 1952 patent statute that governs what is patent-eligible subject matter.

... "Your argument is that anything that helps business succeed is patentable," Breyer said. Would the framers of the Constitution, he asked, really have wanted everyone with a new idea to run to Washington to get a patent, in the process enabling them to "stop the wheels of progress" unless competitors got permission?

"Why not patent a method of speed dating?" Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked.

There are a few, limited areas, Jakes said, where patent protection isn't available; he pointed to the fine arts as one example. Otherwise, he argued, patents encourage people to innovate, and it is via the patent system that they disclose their new creations to the public.

... Justice Sotomayor took issue with Jakes's suggestion that patents are always a manifestation of innovation.

"A patent limits the free flow of information," she said. "It requires licensing. You can't argue your position is enhancing the free flow of information."

Jakes replied: "It does, because of the disclosure requirement."

"Even though the public can't use [the patented invention]," noted Scalia.

"That's our system," said Jakes. "We do grant exclusive rights in exchange for disclosure."

Time and again, Jakes refused to draw a line that ruled anything off-limits to the patent regime. His position left the justices questioning whether he was advocating the "ownership" of basic human activities.

"Let's take training horses," said Justice Antonin Scalia. "Don't you think that some people, horse whisperers or others, had some ... insights into the best way to train horses? Why didn't anybody patent those things?"

"I think our economy was based on industrial processes," responded Jakes.

"It was based on horses, for Pete's sake!" said Scalia. "I would really have thought somebody would have patented that."

... Chief Justice Roberts pushed back on an inconsistency in Stewart's briefing of the case. On the one hand, he said, the government claims Bilski's method just describes a way of doing business, and therefore isn't patentable but then posits that a computer with an "interactive website" doing the same thing might be. "That's like saying if you use a typewriter to type out the process, then it's patentable," said Roberts.

If the website scheme was part of a computer program, Stewart said, "the computer would be at the heart of the innovation."

"No, no," said Roberts. "That's just saying instead of looking in the Yellow Pages, you look on a computer."

[Mises blog cross-post; SK.com cross-post]

In Jeff Tucker's superb article If You Believe in IP, How Do You Teach Others?, he notes Rand's increasing focus on exalting the creator and elevating "intellectual rights" to such a height that they totally trump real rights. This is no exaggeration. As I noted in Against Intellectual Property, Rand actually, incredibly said that "patents are the heart and core of property rights." See also my post Inventors are Like Unto .... GODS....., noting Objectivist IP attorney Murray Franck approvingly repeating this quote: "intellectual property is after all the only absolute possession in the world."

So, yes, Objectivists focus on the creation of value, and thus in rights in value, and explicitly drop the connection between property rights and scarcity. As I note in footnote 76 of Against Intellectual Property, Objectivist David Kelley wrote:

Property rights are required because man needs to support his life by the use of his reason. The primary task in this regard is to create values that satisfy human needs, rather than relying on what we find in nature, as animals do. . . . [T]he essential basis of property rights lies in the phenomenon of creating value. . . . Scarcity becomes a relevant issue when we consider the use of things in nature, such as land, as inputs to the process of creating value. As a general rule, I would say that two conditions are required in order to appropriate things in nature and make them one's property: (1) one must put them to some productive use, and (2) that productive use must require exclusive control over them, i.e., the right to exclude others. . . . Condition (2) holds only when the resource is scarce. But for things that one has created, such as a new product, one's act of creation is the source of the right, regardless of scarcity. [emphasis added]

Letter on Intellectual Property Rights, IOS Journal 5, no. 2 (June 1995), pp. 12-13 (including: David Kelley, "Response to Kinsella," IOS Journal 5, no. 2 (June 1995), p. 13; and Murray I. Franck, "Intellectual and Personality Property," IOS Journal 5, no. 3 September 1995), p. 7.

Thus, Objectivists will talk about man creating values. For them "a value" is a thing that exists; it's what you "create". For the Austrian and Austro-libertarian, you don't talk about "a value" as if it's an existing thing that you create. I don't make a value. For us, it's more of a verb: we value things as ends or as means to ends. We can make something more valuable by transforming it, but we do not create new property when we do this. As discussed in Intellectual Property and Libertarianism, creation is an important means of increasing wealth. As Hoppe has observed,

One can acquire and increase wealth either through homesteading, production and contractual exchange, or by expropriating and exploiting homesteaders, producers, or contractual exchangers. There are no other ways. [Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "Banking, Nation States and International Politics: A Sociological Reconstruction of the Present Economic Order," Review of Austrian Economics 4 (1990): pp. 55-87, p. 60. Emphasis added.]

While production or creation may be a means of gaining "wealth," it is not an independent source of ownership or rights. Production is not the creation of new matter; it is the transformation of things from one form to another the transformation of things someone already owns, either the producer or someone else.

By viewing "values" as things that we create, Objectivists then think there should be property rights in values. They are things, after all, right? But this is a fundamental mistake. As I noted in Objectivist Law Prof Mossoff on Copyright; or, the Misuse of Labor, Value, and Creation Metaphors, a common mistaken belief is that one has a property right in the value, as opposed to the physical integrity of, one's property. For elaboration, see pp. 139-141 of Hoppe's A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism; also see my comments re same to Patents and Utilitarian Thinking. This assumption sneaks into or lies at the basis of many fallacious notions of property rights, such as the idea that there is a right to a reputation because it can have value. It ties in with the (especially Randian) notion of "creation" as the source of rights, and the confusing admixture of the "labor" idea, when we talk about using our labor to "create" things of "value" (like reputations, inventions, works of art). As Hoppe notes in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property:

According to this understanding of private property, property ownership means the exclusive control of a particular person over specific physical objects and spaces. Conversely, property rights invasion means the uninvited physical damage or diminution of things and territories owned by other persons. In contrast, a widely held view holds that the damage or diminution of the value (or price) of someone's property also constitutes a punishable offense.As far as the (in)compatibility of both positions is concerned, it is easy to recognize that nearly every action of an individual can alter the value (price) of someone else's property. For example, when person A enters the labor or the marriage market, this may change the value of B in these markets. And when A changes his relative valuations of beer and bread, or if A himself decides to become a brewer or baker, this changes the value of the property of other brewers and bakers. According to the view that value damage constitutes a rights violation, A would be committing a punishable offense vis-à-vis brewers or bakers. If A is guilty, then B and the brewers and bakers must have the right to defend themselves against A's actions, and their defensive actions can only consist of physical invasions of A and his property. B must be permitted to physically prohibit A from entering the labor or marriage market; the brewers and bakers must be permitted to physically prevent A from spending his money as he sees fit. However, in this case the physical damage or diminution of the property of others cannot be viewed as a punishable offense. Since physical invasion and diminution are defensive actions, they are legitimate. Conversely, if physical damage and diminution constitute a rights violation, then B or the brewers and bakers do not have the right to defend themselves against A's actions, for his actions - his entering of the labor and marriage market, his altered evaluation of beer and bread, or his opening of a brewery or bakery - do not affect B's bodily integrity or the physical integrity of the property of brewers or bakers. If they physically defend themselves nonetheless, then the right to defense would lie with A. In that case, however, it can not be regarded as a punishable offense if one alters the value of other people's property. A third possibility does not exist.

Both ideas of property rights are not only incompatible, however. The alternative view - that one could be the owner of the value or price of scarce goods - is indefensible. While a person has control over whether or not his actions will change the physical properties of another's property, he has no control over whether or not his actions affect the value (or price) of another's property. This is determined by other individuals and their evaluations. Consequently, it would be impossible to know in advance whether or not one's planned actions were legitimate. The entire population would have to be interrogated to assure that one's actions would not damage the value of someone else's property, and one could not begin to act until a universal consensus had been reached. Mankind would die out long before this assumption could ever be fulfilled.

Moreover, the assertion that one has a property right in the value of things involves a contradiction, for in order to claim this proposition to be valid - universally agreeable - it would have to be assumed that it is permissible to act before agreement is reached. Otherwise, it would be impossible to ever propose anything However, if one is permitted to assert a proposition - and no one could deny this without running into contradictions - then this is only possible because physical property borders exist, i.e., borders which everyone can recognize and ascertain independently and in complete ignorance of others' subjective valuations.

Rand did have insights that militated against property rights in "values"; as she once wrote:

The power to rearrange the combinations of natural elements is the only creative power man possesses. It is an enormous and glorious power and it is the only meaning of the concept "creative." "Creation" does not (and metaphysically cannot) mean the power to bring something into existence out of nothing. "Creation" means the power to bring into existence an arrangement (or combination or integration) of natural elements that had not existed before.

She should have realized that this means there cannot be property rights in value since this would have to mean property rights in arrangements or patterns, which would then give the owner of the arrangement rights in other people's already-owned property. If she had kept her focus on the fact that rearranging already-existing property can indeed make that property more valuable, she would have realized that creation (rearrangement) is not an independent source of property rights: if you rearrange your own property, even if this makes it more valuable, you already owned the property that you have rearranged (made more valuable). Yet this does not give you rights in other people's property. You can re-word the Randian view as follows: if you make your property more valuable, it gives you additional property rights--the right to prevent other people from making their own property more valuable. And this makes it all the more obviously flawed.

This is where the Misesian approach to subjectivist value makes sense: things have value to a valuer; values do not exist independently as free-floating things that can themselves be owned. And again, Rand should have recognized this; e.g., she once wrote, "Material objects as such have neither value nor disvalue; they acquire value-significance only in regard to a living being particularly, in regard to serving or hindering man's goals." (For more on the compatibility between Objectivism and Austrian economics, see Mises and Rand (and Rothbard); Randian Hoppe(?), Austrian Rand(?).) So she should have realized that if rearranging owned property makes the owner or potential buyers value the object more, it does not mean there is any additional thing created for which we need to find an owner.

I think a similar mistake is made by Tibor Machan. Rand slips into thinking of values as ownable things because she thinks of values as created things, rather than thinking of it as a verb: people value things (and demonstrate this preference or valuing in action). I'm sure Machan would disagree with my way or framing his argument, but his argument, to me, seems to say that if you can have a concept for some"thing", or a name or word for "it," then it's an ontological "type of thing," and after all, if you create this thing, why shouldn't you be "its" owner? The problem (For more on this, see New Working Paper: Machan on IP; Owning Thoughts and Labor; this comment to "Trademark and Fraud"; Libertarian Creationism; also Elaborations on Randian IP and Objectivists on IP.)

Bloomberg.com cites this figure in its coverage which speaks volumes -

Applications for so-called business method patents have soared over the past decade, from 974 in fiscal 1997 to a peak of 14,364 in 2008, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Wired.com has the scoop:

A federal judge ruled Monday that a lawsuit can move forward against the Patent and Trademark Office and the research company that was awarded exclusive rights to human genes known to detect early signs of breast and ovarian cancer.

The first-of-its-kind lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law claims that the patents violate free speech by restricting research.

Three cheers for the judge!

More to read (along with documents and decision from the case) can be found HERE.

UPDATE: CourthouseNews.com has more interesting tidbits regarding the lawsuit HERE.