One of the best empirical economists working on patents is Petra Moser of Stanford. She has an extraordinary ability to find unusual data that answers really hard questions. Her most recent paper Compulsory Licensing with Allessandra Voena does just that.

There is - a frankly rather ridiculous view, one held only by lawyers for whom the distinction between 10 ^ -6 and 10 ^ +6 is invisible - that somehow compulsory licensing in a country will reduce innovation because it will be every so much more attractive to "steal" all those great foreign inventions. In this view - which crops up in these pages occasionally in anecdotal form - the great thing about patents is that it increases innovation by forcing people to "invent around" patents.

The "Compulsory Licensing" paper attacks this question directly - looking at an episode where the US "stole" a bunch of inventions by compulsory licensing after World War I. The consequent effect on innovation in the areas covered by the licenses? It went up by 20%.

In my view debunking the rather silly view that compulsory licensing would diminish innovation is not this papers main contribution. We recognize that patents have two effects (ignoring "invent around" and "revealing secrets" both of which are of at best minuscule significance): increasing innovation by increasing incentives to innovate, and decreasing innovation by making it more costly to innovate. This paper gives us a pretty clean measure of the latter effect: the benefit of being able to access existing ideas without negotiation or licensing raises innovation by around 20%.

Binyamin Appelbaum and David Cho return to the problem of fixing America's credit system and of reforming the broken complex of supervisory authorities link here. The context is the reappointment of Ben Benanke to chair the FED and the push for regulatory reform which redefines the role of the FED, given the running failure of the regulators to protect consumers and the banking system from fraud or excess that produced the bubble and brought the economy down. The story has details that you probably haven't heard before and pins a fair amount of blame on Bernanke. In my mind, it raises a serious doubt about reappointing him in the absence of a prior major reassignment of regulatory duties, removing a number of them from the central role of the FED. The FED's primary duty remains using interest rates to control inflation and foster full employment. To argue as some do that the FED is ill-suited to preventing or popping bubbles doesn't persuade me that it shouldn't be done. The more deep seated issue is ending regulatory capture by Wall Street and that won't happen until we find a better way to finance politics.

I was recently reminded of "The Reluctant Anarchist," a wonderful piece by the great columnist Joseph Sobran about his intellectual journey from conservatism to strict constitutionalism to anarchist--thanks to Rothbard and Hoppe. Highly recommended.

Note: I post this on this blog because the proprietor assured me once that this blog is not only about IP but all forms of monopoly. And it is the state that is the biggest and most dangerous monopolist of all--in fact, the only true monopoly. It is the source of the monopoly known as intellectual property; without the state, IP could not exist. Those who oppose IP but favor the state remind me of members of skeptics groups--those who scoff at ESP, astrology, and divining rods--but who are still religious. Those who oppose IP but favor the state should engage in some reflection.

[Mises; SK]

[Please reply to this at the original Mises Blog post]

It's my impression that in the last 5-10 years, there has been a striking movement towards the anti-IP camp among libertarians and Austrians. This is a result of the mounting everyday evidence of injustice resulting from the digital age magnifying the baleful effects of IP that have always existed; and the mounting scholarship, from a pro-property rights, pro-free market perspective, against both the moral and principled case and the utilitarian case for IP (resources listed in the final section of my "The Case Against IP: A Concise Guide").

I'm personally aware of dozens of people who have changed their minds or seen the light on this issue--including, say, myself, Jeff Tucker, and many others. For some things I'm writing and just for general curiosity it would be interesting to get a better idea of this trend. Please feel free to add a brief comment to this post specifying whether you have moved toward the anti-IP position in recent years.

Update: Some here may also find of interest the Patent Rights Web Poll I did a while back, pasted below. Feel free to take it if you haven't:

***

On a patent practitioner email list I posted the following:

It seems to me that many small/medium companies live in fear of a big patent lawsuit. Even if they had their own IP, I suspect many companies would gladly give up forever their right to sue for patent infringement, in exchange for some kind of immunity from patent liability--at least, if they could eliminate the threat of an injunction, so that the worst penalty they might face is some kind of mandatory royalty. Surely IBM et al. would not take this deal, but I bet a lot of other companies would. What do you think?

Second, in view of this, does this mean there is some kind of market for a service that would let a bunch of companies get together and "pool" their IP and have some kind of agreement (a) never to sue each other; (b) to have access to this pool of patents to countersue any company that sues any of the members.

This post drew some interest so I am doing a simple webpoll. I think the results might be interesting. (DIGG it here.)