Would a libertarian society recognize patents as legitimate? What about copyright? In Against Intellectual Property , Stephan Kinsella, a patent attorney of many years’ experience, offers his response to these questions. Kinsella is altogether opposed to intellectual property, and he explains his position in this brief but wide-ranging
The Rothbard Memorial Lecture, from the 2008 Austrian Scholars Conference at the Ludwig von Mises Institute; Auburn, Alabama. Includes Question and Answer session. [56:03]
As I noted in The Schizo Feds: Patent Monopolies and the FTC , the state grants patent monopolies and then uses antitrust law to attack the beneficiaries of those monopolies. As one commentator noted in a related thread , “It is amusing, watching one agency of government applying a system whose entire purpose is the creation of monopolies, and
Tom DiLorenzo, in his new book, Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution - And What It Means for Americans Today (see his The Founding Father of Constitutional Subversion ), shows how Hamilton helped to subvert the superior (and more libertarian) Jeffersonian interpretation of the Constitution. But though
In Troll Tracker Lands Job Fighting Patent Trolls! , I noted the defamation suits filed against “Troll Tracker,” aka Rick Frenkel, by two Texas lawyers, in the aftermath of Frenkel’s identity being revealed, after bounties put up by one of the subjects of his criticism, patent attorney Ray Niro. (Whew! It’s convoluted, but all you need to know is
I just received an ominous (but informative) update from my company’s excellent outside employment lawyer ( Trey Wood , of Alaniz and Schraeder ), regarding the mis-named “ Employee Free Choice Act “. The EFCA, as one commentor notes here , “should rightly be called the Employee No Choice Act. It will abolish NLRB elections and allow unions to
It can of course be useful to point out harmful consequences of various policies, if only to engage advocates of same on their own turf. Thus in There’s No Such Thing as a Free Patent I point out that those who claim the benefits of patents outweigh the costs never seem to tally up these figures and give us the net. And indeed, whenever anyone
I just discovered that the old issues of Access to Energy , the wonderful pro-nuclear, pro-science, pro-technology, pro-free enterprise newsletter formerly published by the late, great Dr. Petr Beckmann are online . Beckmann was a brilliant electrical engineering professor and libertarian who died of cancer in 1993 (see his poignant, “ Goodbye,
Recently, re-listening to the 1991 lecture “Ayn Rand, Intellectual Property Rights, and Human Liberty,” by Objectivist attorney Murray Franck, I was struck by one of quotes given in defense of IP. During his lecture, Franck reads (most of) the following quote approvingly: “When we come to weigh the rights of the several sorts of property which can
Techdirt notes in CAFC Judge Regrets Decisions That Resulted In Software Patents that one of the federal judges on the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit admits that he was “troubled by the unintended consequences” of the earlier decisions that resulted in the proliferation of software and business model patents. Well at least he regrets it!
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.