All property rights have a limited duration. The dead cannot own property. But patents and copyrights are not passed down indefinitely because that would reward people for being born to someone who was productive.

Here is my take on Rand's explanation on this point
Rand has a very interesting take on the reason for limited terms of patents and copyrights. She analogies a patent or copyright to a debt owed to the inventor/author by people that copy the inventor’s invention or author’s book. Debts are not and cannot be perpetual, so this is why the term of patents and copyrights are limited according to Rand. I will note that real property rights are actually time limited also. A person only has a property right in real (personal) property during their lifetime. How can someone who is not alive own something – this would be a logical absurdity. However, real property is passed on to the person with the next best title to real property upon a person’s death. In the case of intellectual property, no one person has better title to intellectual property than anyone else so upon the expiration of its term it becomes free for all mankind to use. Or as Rand explains, real property “can be left to heirs, but it cannot remain in their effortless possession in perpetuity: the heirs can consume it or must earn its continued possession by their own productive effort.”[8] In contrast, “Intellectual property cannot be consumed. If it were held in perpetuity, it would lead to the opposite of the very principle on which it is based: it would lead, not to the earned reward of achievement, but to the unearned support of parasitism.”[9]

No I am saying an invention has to be enabled. Meaning it has to be described so one skilled in the art can practice the invention. That does not mean that you have to necessarily build an actual instance of the invention.

4) No but just shouting correlation is not an argument. And socialized medicine does not correlate with economic freedom. Because it would include Venezuela, North Korea, the USSR or Russia, so your argument does not follow and you have not shown that it is correlation. I have provide overwhelming evidence for causation, but will repeat it once again.

a) All real per capita increases in wealth are due to increases in the level of technology. See Robert Solow and others - New Growth Technology.
b) The industrial revolution, which was really about a perpetual invention machine, started in England and the US around the time of the advent of modern patent systems. Note this is the first time that large groups of people escape the Malthusian trap (real incomes start to grow).

c) Japan copies the US patent system in 1860s and that is when their real per capita incomes start to grow.

d) Those countries with the strongest patent systems create most of the new inventions and have the greatest dissemination of new technologies and vice versa.

e) Every time a property right is enforced for an asset people invest more in that asset, e.g., private land rights and pilgrims, USSR and Red China's restoring private plots of land.. The same is shown to be true for inventions.

THE EVIDENCE IS OVERWHELMING IF YOU ARE WILLING TO LOOK.

Many inventors view a patent as a way of offering up their ideas as a sacrifice to big businesses that ignore patent law when it suits them, and a boon to patent attorneys that inventors can ill afford.
The benefit of patents is only really effective for the wealthy who can afford to litigate against manufacturers in the 3rd world. It is yet another way that small business is discriminated against by government in favor of government's looter partners, large corporate interests.

1) I am serious.
2) I am interested in the truth.
3) Way too much emphasis on attacking my alleged motives and not enough on responding to my arguments.
4) Correlation is not causation. The top five countries in the Heritage index of economic freedom all have government-controlled health care. Should we conclude that socialized medicine is desirable because it correlates well with an economic freedom index?

So, let's try this again. I would take the position that the source of all creation by humans is a human that forms an idea, then puts the mental/physical effort into that idea to turn it into something perceptible or tangible to other humans. That would imply that an idea of a schizophrenic implanted by his secret voice would be patentable.

Are you saying that the idea alone, without the effort of the mind to work it into a song, piece of art, writing, or working machine or thing is copyrightable or patentable, and someone else can come forward with a similar idea as the basis combined with the mental/physical effort producing the perceptible/tangible thing and is prevented from copyrighting or patenting or even using his work?

I don't think that's what you're trying to say. If you are, please explain how I can patent an idea alone, without developing the idea into at least a comprehensible and communicable plan, description, and/or demonstration.

Thank you vey much. I enjoy discussing with you too.
All the best!

Congrats Martimus! I enjoy discussing with you! Here's to your next 100 comments! May they come fast and furiously

I don't buy it. That's like saying someone at the same time was creating an Emily Dickinson poem. not likely. Let's give credit where credit is due. In highly competitive and disruptive industries, time and time again it's shown that yes, the same idea will be reproduced-but not at the same exact time. The PTO has a fail safe process for this and over the years it just doesn't pan out. This is a fallacy. A fairy tale.

May I suggest that there is probably a difference between incentives and motives. Also, if each human is an unpresedented and irepeattable individual and I think they are, there is likely to be a nearly infinite variety in the balance between incentives (external) and motives (internal).
Hey! This is my 100th comment!! I deserve an award. Something more valuable than the Nobel Peace Prize, please.

you want to attack patents. Ok. you have to be serious about the evidence. You are hunting and pecking for anything when evidence is over-fuching-whelming against your stance. bring some Objectivism into the discussion, someone, pleeeese

Depends on what you mean by an idea. An invention is an idea that is described in enough detail to practice an invention. It is not just I want a flying car. That can and should be the property rights of the inventor. An invention is always a class of things, not a specific instance.

If you were serious all you would have to do is overlay the economic freedom indices and the strength of patent laws in those countries. It's almost a perfect correlation. Then look at technological/scientific advances in countries versus the strength of their patent systems. The evidence is overwhelming.

It would be interested if you were actually interested in the truth.

Mike what a bunch of BS. It is a complete contradiction to Atlas Shrugged and all historical evidence that incentives do not matter to creators. See Zorina Khan and others that have shown incentives are clearly important to inventors.

Please spread you socialist nonsense somewhere else.

I have dealt with both. Independent is also a myth. Patents are published, to suggest independent invention is to suggest you failed to do you due diligence. That is exactly the worst sort of second hander that provides nothing.

Yes and there was a procedure for it and invention was never simultaneous. There is an infinite number of things to invent. Not everyone win in every business and not everyone wins when inventing. Reality is not a socialist pipe dream of equality.

Right, as if software is monolithic. What a bunch of nonsense propaganda.

My problem in observing these discussions seems to center on the claims by some that an idea can be owned. I understand copyright to apply to the published writing of that idea and patent to apply to the verifiable demonstration of an idea.

Many individuals can have the same idea or conceptual thought at the same time, but the genius of the inventor is the ability to turn that idea into a workable and demonstrable thing.

Am I missing something in all of this argument?

GDP per patent and R&D per patent have not increased nearly as much as stated, because the U.S. government systematically understates the true rate of inflation. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-06...

GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is itself a misleading government statistic: http://economyincrisis.org/content/why-g...

It would be interesting to do an analysis of how much economic growth is due to the expiration of patents and removal of the threat of "infringement" lawsuits.

Dear ObjectiveAnalyst:
Yes, I have citations from both Rand and Mises. I know that Rand said that if one man beats another to the Patent Office by a fraction of a day, that is the outcome of free and open competition. I note only that patents are JUST ONE factor for the creator. I had a graduate class in "Technology and Society" taught by Ron Westrum, a recognized authority. We did not agree on the modern instantiations, but I had to accept his presentation of history.

Dr. Westrum taught that the professional inventor is not a "Gyro Gearloose" but a grounded, practical, and creative person who systematically works at several to many successfully patented ideas that meet actual, marketable needs.

He taught that patents were invented in Venice in 1450. The state protected your right to control your idea on the agreement that upon your death, rights go to the state. Thus the Republic of Venice ultimately owned all patents to its own further enrichments - on behalf of the people, of course...

My citations:

The Creative Genius
Far above the millions that come and pass away tower the pioneers, the men whose deeds and ideas cut out new paths for mankind. For the pioneering genius12 to create is the essence of life. To live means for him to create. The activities of these prodigious men cannot be fully subsumed under the praxeological concept of labor. They are not labor because they are for the genius not means, but ends in themselves. He lives in creating and inventing. For him there is not leisure, only intermissions of temporary sterility and frustration. His incentive is not the desire to bring about a result, but the act of producing it. The accomplishment gratifies him neither mediately nor immediately. It does not gratify him mediately because his fellow men at best are unconcerned about it, more often even greet it with taunts, sneers, and persecution. Many a genius could have used his gifts to render his life agreeable and joyful; he did not even consider such a possibility and chose the thorny path without hesitation. The genius wants to accomplish what he considers his mission, even if he knows that he moves toward his own disaster.

Von Mises, Human Action, "Action Within the World" (1966 ed., pg 139)

"Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived, and he lifted darkness off the earth.

Throughout the centuries, there were men who took first steps down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision. The great creators - the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors - stood alone against the men of their time. Every new thought was opposed; every new invention was denounced. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered, and they paid. But they won.

No creator was prompted by a desire to please his brothers. His brothers hated the gift he offered.

His truth was his only motive.

His work was his only goal.

His work - not those who used it.

His creation - not the benefits others derived from it - the creation which gave form to his truth.

He held his truth above all things and against all men. He went ahead whether others agreed with him or not, with his integrity as his only banner. He served nothing and no one. He lived for himself. And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement."
-- Howard Roark's "Courtroom Speech" in The Fountainhead.

Robbie said INDEPENDENT not "simultaneous." For me the classic case is Srinivas Ramanujan who independently discovered many things that were already known. That he did that on his own was the fact. Also true, you cannot patent a mathematical theorem. However, the corrupt patent system does allow for software patents which are only mathematical statements. You need to address the core issues, here, Dale. Instead you changed the subject in order defend present US patent law.

This is nonsense. That is like saying you cannot know who your competitors are. The number of webpages about new software products and features is easily 10 times that number. In a country of 313 million people, having 0.0125 percent of the population invent something in software is too low, not too high.

The objective evidence is that GDP per patent, R&D per patent, and citations per patent have increased over the last 50 years. http://hallingblog.com/patent-quality-no...

As the US becomes more of an information economy, you would expect the number of patent per GDP, and per R&D dollar to be decreasing, not increasing. The number of patents issued is being arbitrarily suppressed and this is hurting the US economy.

Here is what Rand said:
Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man’s right to the product of his mind.

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal “Patents and Copyrights,”
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 130


I do not think this is contradictory. Man's right to his life, means he owns those things he creates. Or as Locke (updated) stated it you own yourself so you own those things you create.