How "Intellectual Property" Impedes Competition

[ClayTrainor]

I have taken multiple classes in copyright law, I work in the music industry, and copyright is a hobby of mine.


That being said there is no such thing as copyright, and there is also no such thing as intellectual property. Ideas are not property, and having an exclusive monopoly to copy/distribute etc a work of art or an idea is NOT a right.

It should be called copyprivilege. Remember government cannot grant rights, only privileges.


Labeling it as intellectual "property" is a misnomer.

Well said!

 

[jyakulis]

So, you guys want to amend the constitution to take out this part?:

"The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"

Just wondering. That's fine. You realize every company that comes up with new technologies will just make their findings trade secrets. Why would you disclose something if it can be stolen and copied?

The temporary monopoly (patents) is a trade off for full disclosure (promotion of sciences).

 

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

So, you guys want to amend the constitution to take out this part?:

"The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"

Just wondering. That's fine. You realize every company that comes up with new technologies will just make their findings trade secrets. Why would you disclose something if it can be stolen and copied?

The temporary monopoly (patents) is a trade off for full disclosure (promotion of sciences).

Nothing is a trade secret. Other companies can buy your product and reverse engineer it, or at least understand it's mechanisms. Besides, you don't believe that a company will pay (more) one of their employees to come work for them? Believe it or not, companies and corporations do intelligence work against their competitors.

Fallacy, fallacy, fallacy. There is absolutely no legitimate nor, moral arguement to be made for IP or Patent rights. Just because it's in the Constitution doesn't mean it's sacred.

 

[jyakulis]

Nothing is a trade secret. Other companies can buy your product and reverse engineer it, or at least understand it's mechanisms. Besides, you don't believe that a company will pay (more) one of their employees to come work for them? Believe it or not, companies and corporations do intelligence work against their competitors.

Fallacy, fallacy, fallacy. There is absolutely no legitimate nor, moral arguement to be made for IP or Patent rights. Just because it's in the Constitution doesn't mean it's sacred.

Your first point of nothing is a trade secret. This is a fallacy. First how could you never know that. KFC special recipe for chicken much? I work for a high technology company. We can synthesize tantalum carbide. There happens to be many ways to synthesize it. Our way gets superior results. Most don't know why, even though they know the general processing techniques we use. We do. That's a trade secret.

Your second point about company A paying an employee more than company B he currently works for. Apparently you never worked in technology. Most if not all companies ask you to VOLUNTARILY sign a non disclosure agreement or you don't get to work there. That means you can't do that, or at least take their property and basically steal it or they can sue you for damages.

 

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

Your first point of nothing is a trade secret. This is a fallacy. First how could you never know that. KFC special recipe for chicken much? I work for a high technology company. We can synthesize tantalum carbide. There happens to be many ways to synthesize it. Our way gets superior results. Most don't know why, even though they know the general processing techniques we use. We do. That's a trade secret.

Your second point about company A paying an employee more than company B he currently works for. Apparently you never worked in technology. Most if not all companies ask you to VOLUNTARILY sign a non disclosure agreement or you don't get to work there. That means you can't do that or at least take their property and basically steal it or they can sue you.

Did you read my opening post? Of course the parent company will produce the product better, but the market demand isn't only for quality. People will buy, and are interested in lesser quality products at lower prices. I thought this would be common knowledge seeing as every product on the market just about has duplicative products. What IP does, is make it illegal to even PRODUCE the product, or the idea.

Read Rothbard on IP. All his works are on mises for free.

Anything that is produced, can be reverse engineered period. Even so, there will be other people that come up with competing idea's, products, in the same functioning category. Look at Microsoft and Linux. They both fulfill the same function. Obviously some people think one is better than the other. Quality is as subjective as anything. This all goes back to Human Action by Mises and why Austrians don't really believe in econometrics too much.

Well, does that NDA last forever? What happens if the business goes bankrupt? What happens if he gets fired? I don't know anyone in their right mind who would sign a NDA stating they can never work in that related product field unless it's with this company only. Besides, there would be companies who lease their designs and idea's out to other's also.

In any event, I must reiterate, there is absolutely nothing that cannot be reverse engineered, it may not be the same, or it could be better, but there is always a market for "less desirables", otherwise there would only be one product of every good and that simply isn't true, is it?

Don't you think it's a bit ridiculous that I can't create a character that is like Mickey Mouse, but with a different name? They have essentially said that idea is their property, and the Government made it illegal for anyone else to produce such an idea. Do you honestly believe that this one person is, or would be, the only person in the history of the world to make a character like that?

 

[nobody's_hero]

It has been my experience over more years than many of you have been alive that the people who oppose Intellectual Property Rights are people who have never had an original idea.

If you can't put what you think you know into your own words, you can't be sure you know what you think you know. And I see a lotta lotta link-hurling around here, by way of stating a position. I can't begin to count the number of threads that have been entitled along lines like these: WHAT DOES DR. PAUL TELL US ABOUT THIS, QUICK! HELP ME DEBUNK THIS ARGUMENT, WHAT DO WE THINK ABOUT THIS, THAT OR THE OTHER.

Original material is original material. It's where the buck STARTS.

Ding ding ding. Winner.

 

[silverhandorder]

To me it seems the market has enough protection for IP. For government to provide it is not necessary.

I hate to break it IP defenders but just because you thought of a clever story does not mean that your asking price is correct. Once it gets out there it becomes impossible to enforce copy right protection. I think in this day and age where we have so many people who have the luxury time to produce intellectual property has reduced the value of it by inflating the supply.

I don't consider copying some one else theft.

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

Your first point of nothing is a trade secret. This is a fallacy. First how could you never know that. KFC special recipe for chicken much? I work for a high technology company. We can synthesize tantalum carbide. There happens to be many ways to synthesize it. Our way gets superior results. Most don't know why, even though they know the general processing techniques we use. We do. That's a trade secret.

Your second point about company A paying an employee more than company B he currently works for. Apparently you never worked in technology. Most if not all companies ask you to VOLUNTARILY sign a non disclosure agreement or you don't get to work there. That means you can't do that, or at least take their property and basically steal it or they can sue you for damages.

WOW! - that tool about 5 seconds to find - some "trade secret"....

http://www.recipezaar.com/KFC-Chicken-Secret-Spices-32331

KFC Chicken Secret Spices

I've never tried this, just saw it on another board and had to snatch it up! There are actually 11 spices in the above combination, but an additional 3 ingredients were necessary to get that special flavor.

3/4 cup (change servings and units)
Change to: cup US Metric Close

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Ingredients

* 1 tablespoon rosemary
* 1 tablespoon oregano
* 1 tablespoon ground sage
* 1 teaspoon powdered ginger
* 1 teaspoon marjoram
* 1 1/2 teaspoons thyme
* 3 tablespoons packed brown sugar
* 3 tablespoons dry minced parsley
* 1 teaspoon pepper
* 1 tablespoon paprika
* 2 tablespoons garlic salt
* 2 tablespoons onion salt
* 2 tablespoons chicken bouillon powder or 4 chicken bouillon cubes, crushed
* 1 package lipton cup tomato soup mix

Directions

1.
1
Place all ingredients in blender and pulse for 3-4 minutes to grind well.
2.
2
Store in an airtight container.
3.
3
Makes about 3/4 cup.
4.
4
To use with flour, add 1 oz mix to 1 cup of flour for coating chicken.

http://www.kfcchickenrecipe.com/

Colonel Sanders prepared the chicken recipe about half a century ago and it is really quite hard to duplicate this recipe as it uses secret combination of herbs.
To protect their top secret recipe, KFC has portions of the secret blend of herbs premixed at two confidential spice companies. After that, the blend is distributed to the KFC's offices located at different, where they are finally combined for use. There is one more point to note, KFC uses pressure cookers to fry their chicken pieces so unless you have a way of pressure frying at home, it will be quite difficult for you to duplicate KFC chicken recipe.

If you want to fry super crusty and crispy chicken like KFC, you need to dip your chicken pieces in egg, then flour, then egg then flour coating. After that, you need to fry it in a pressure cooker so that you will get the exact same crusty and crispy taste to your fried chicken which KFC is so eager to protect at all cost. Before you proceed further it is advisable to go through the article KFC Secret Recipe to know about the secret mix of the herbs used by KFC to derive that special taste.

To prepare the KFC Chicken you will require the following ingredients:

1 tablespoon powdered sage leaves
1 teaspoon powdered dry ginger
1 tablespoon crushed rosemary leaves
1 pack of tomato soup mix
1 tablespoon crushed Mexican Origanum leaves
1 teaspoon sweet marjoram
1 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon hot pepper powder
1 chicken cut into frying pieces
1 1/2 teaspoon crushed wild thyme leaves
150 grams all purpose flour blended nicely with secret herbs combination
2 tablespoon of garlic salt
2 tablespoon of powdered chicken soup cubes
2 tablespoon of onion salt
2 eggs
160 milliliters of milk
40 gram brown sugar
3 tablespoon of dry minced parsley leaves


Method
You have to put all the ingredients mentioned above in a blender and blend it for 3 to 4 minutes barring flour, eggs and milk.
Next, combine the eggs and milk and beat it to a smooth consistency after that add the previously blended herbs and work out a homogeneous mixture. and take the flour on a baking paper sheet.

Now, dip the chicken pieces in the mixture and roll them on the flour until they are perfectly coated. Fry the pieces in a pressure cooker if you have one or you can just fry them at 365 degrees F (185° C) ascertained by dropping a 2 inch square of bread, it should turn golden brown in about 60 seconds. in the hot oil fry the chicken pieces for 20 to 30 minutes, occasionally turning them so that they are cooked evenly after the chicken pieces are fried golden brown.

Drain the fried chicken for a while on the tissue paper so that it won't be so oily and greasy. Serve them hot.

-t

 

[RedStripe]

Kevin Carson for President

 

[ClayTrainor]

Ding ding ding. Winner.

That's absolutely not true. I've made 100% of my income since quitting my job at the weather office, from original ideas, and i think IP rights are total bunk.

 

[Andrew-Austin]

It has been my experience over more years than many of you have been alive that the people who oppose Intellectual Property Rights are people who have never had an original idea.

Ad hominem.

If you can't put what you think you know into your own words, you can't be sure you know what you think you know.

People on this forum who are against IP law break the issue down in their own words all the time. Its pretty simple.

I can't begin to count the number of threads that have been entitled along lines like these: WHAT DOES DR. PAUL TELL US ABOUT THIS, QUICK! HELP ME DEBUNK THIS ARGUMENT, WHAT DO WE THINK ABOUT THIS, THAT OR THE OTHER.

LoL well that does not apply to me, and I don't think it applies to most people who are against IP law, since most of us are ancaps or radical libertarians.

 

[jyakulis]

Did you read my opening post? Of course the parent company will produce the product better, but the market demand isn't only for quality. People will buy, and are interested in lesser quality products at lower prices. I thought this would be common knowledge seeing as every product on the market just about has duplicative products. What IP does, is make it illegal to even PRODUCE the product, or the idea.

Read Rothbard on IP. All his works are on mises for free.

Anything that is produced, can be reverse engineered period. Even so, there will be other people that come up with competing idea's, products, in the same functioning category. Look at Microsoft and Linux. They both fulfill the same function. Obviously some people think one is better than the other. Quality is as subjective as anything. This all goes back to Human Action by Mises and why Austrians don't really believe in econometrics too much.

Well, does that NDA last forever? What happens if the business goes bankrupt? What happens if he gets fired? I don't know anyone in their right mind who would sign a NDA stating they can never work in that related product field unless it's with this company only. Besides, there would be companies who lease their designs and idea's out to other's also.

In any event, I must reiterate, there is absolutely nothing that cannot be reverse engineered, it may not be the same, or it could be better, but there is always a market for "less desirables", otherwise there would only be one product of every good and that simply isn't true, is it?

Don't you think it's a bit ridiculous that I can't create a character that is like Mickey Mouse, but with a different name? They have essentially said that idea is their property, and the Government made it illegal for anyone else to produce such an idea. Do you honestly believe that this one person is, or would be, the only person in the history of the world to make a character like that?

Look your claim that nothing is a trade secret is wrong. Again, how could you ever know that? And the fact that something may EVENTUALLY be backwards engineered doesn't mean that while people are trying to backwards engineer it, it remains a secret. So, to you the eventuality of someone finding out how to do something means that it was NEVER a secret, which is a fallacy. Maybe I gave a bad example with KFC, but it was at one time a trade secret and for many years. You are correct in that it can be reversed engineer. But it was a trade secret for many years. That's the risk/reward of trade secrets. You may be able to keep your edge longer than what a patent would give you.

What you folks don't seem to understand is that the patent system is a trade with the government. In order for the government to promote the sciences (you giving full disclosure of how the invention was made with the ability of someone having ordinary skill in the art to make and use that invention) the government gives you a temporary monopoly on your invention. And of course USC 101 in patent law gives inventors the ability to make new useful improvements on existing inventions. So, just because someone invents a spoon it doesn't mean no one in the country can produce spoons. It just means if you want to, you have to come up with an improvement on the design of a spoon that offers some sort of "utiility". AND OMGZ TWO PEOPLE CAN MAKE SPOONS. How bout that? That's why there's tons of semiconductor companies and companies that produce semiconductor equipment. Yet there are thousands of patents for semiconductor production and equipment. All because their equipment or their method offers some sort of utility.

Many a companies were formed on one patent and grew from there. I don't see how in your world globocorp just doesn't steal everyone else's inventions for their own since they would have the most resources available to them to backwards engineer everything.

from wikipedia:

"Trade secrets are by definition not disclosed to the world at large. Instead, owners of trade secrets seek to keep their special knowledge out of the hands of competitors through a variety of civil and commercial means, not the least of which is the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDA) and non-compete clauses. In exchange for the opportunity to be employed by the holder of secrets, an employee will sign an agreement not to reveal his or her prospective employer's proprietary information. Often, the employee will also sign over rights to the ownership of own intellectual works produced during the course (or as a condition) of their employment. Violation of the agreement generally carries the possibility of stiff financial penalties. These penalties operate as a disincentive to revealing trade secrets. Similar agreements are often signed by other companies with whom the trade secret holder is engaged, e.g. with the trade secret holder's vendors, or third parties in licensing talks or involved in other business negotiations.

Trade secret protection can, in principle, extend indefinitely and in this may offer an advantage over patent protection, which lasts only for a specifically limited period of time. Coca-Cola, the most famous trade secret example, has no patent for its formula and has been very effective in protecting it for many more years than the twenty years of protection that a patent would have provided. In fact, Coca-Cola refused to reveal its trade secret under at least two judges' orders.[5] However, the "down side" of such protection is that it is comparatively easy to lose (for example, to reverse engineering, which a patent will withstand but a trade secret will not) and comes equipped with no minimum guaranteed period of years."

 

[powerofreason]

Look your claim that nothing is a trade secret is wrong. Again, how could you ever know that? And the fact that something may EVENTUALLY be backwards engineered doesn't mean that while people are trying to backwards engineer it, it remains a secret. So, to you the eventuality of someone finding out how to do something means that it was NEVER a secret, which is a fallacy. Maybe I gave a bad example with KFC, but it was at one time a trade secret and for many years. You are correct in that it can be reversed engineer. But it was a trade secret for many years. That's the risk/reward of trade secrets. You may be able to keep your edge longer than what a patent would give you.

What you folks don't seem to understand is that the patent system is a trade with the government. In order for the government to promote the sciences (you giving full disclosure of how the invention was made with the ability of someone having ordinary skill in the art to make and use that invention) the government gives you a temporary monopoly on your invention. And of course USC 101 in patent law gives inventors the ability to make new useful improvements on existing inventions. So, just because someone invents a spoon it doesn't mean no one in the country can produce spoons. It just means if you want to, you have to come up with an improvement on the design of a spoon that offers some sort of "utiility". AND OMGZ TWO PEOPLE CAN MAKE SPOONS. How bout that? That's why there's tons of semiconductor companies and companies that produce semiconductor equipment. Yet there are thousands of patents for semiconductor production and equipment. All because their equipment or their method offers some sort of utility.

Many a companies were formed on one patent and grew from there. I don't see how in your world globocorp just doesn't steal everyone else's inventions for their own since they would have the most resources available to them to backwards engineer everything.

from wikipedia:

"Trade secrets are by definition not disclosed to the world at large. Instead, owners of trade secrets seek to keep their special knowledge out of the hands of competitors through a variety of civil and commercial means, not the least of which is the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDA) and non-compete clauses. In exchange for the opportunity to be employed by the holder of secrets, an employee will sign an agreement not to reveal his or her prospective employer's proprietary information. Often, the employee will also sign over rights to the ownership of own intellectual works produced during the course (or as a condition) of their employment. Violation of the agreement generally carries the possibility of stiff financial penalties. These penalties operate as a disincentive to revealing trade secrets. Similar agreements are often signed by other companies with whom the trade secret holder is engaged, e.g. with the trade secret holder's vendors, or third parties in licensing talks or involved in other business negotiations.

Trade secret protection can, in principle, extend indefinitely and in this may offer an advantage over patent protection, which lasts only for a specifically limited period of time. Coca-Cola, the most famous trade secret example, has no patent for its formula and has been very effective in protecting it for many more years than the twenty years of protection that a patent would have provided. In fact, Coca-Cola refused to reveal its trade secret under at least two judges' orders.[5] However, the "down side" of such protection is that it is comparatively easy to lose (for example, to reverse engineering, which a patent will withstand but a trade secret will not) and comes equipped with no minimum guaranteed period of years."

barbarian

 

[Socratic Method]

This helped me form my take on the issue. It may help you too.

http://libertariannation.org/a/f31l1.html

 

[powerofreason]

This helped me form my take on the issue. It may help you too.

http://libertariannation.org/a/f31l1.html

Woot Roderick Long!

 

[r33d33]

Woot Roderick Long!

The fundamental argument is that people will do stuff for free and the examples are that a few times have happened where people did do stuff for free, while ignoring the context that those things occurred in (ie. linux being a reaction to and copy of windows). Basically, the thought is that completely eliminating anyone actually paying for research in the global economy would have a positive effect on long term growth. That concept is flabbergasting. I'm completely speechless and have no good counter argument. I can't, because that concept goes against everything I have ever learned or ever known about how people and the greater economy actually works. It would be like trying to debate someone in a language I have never seen before.

Industries completely wiped out by this:
- Movies
- Publishing
- Software
- Electronics
- Pharmaceuticals
- Music

I mean, sure, there might be some people doing stuff in those fields, but they wouldn't get paid for it. Writing software or writing books would be purely for entertainment purposes and not part of the actual economy. All of them would go the way of painting where you have someone painting at night and working at 7-11 during the day to actually get money to buy food.