[sam h]

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Having jumped in the thread early but been away from my computer, I'll just chip in with a few comments.

1. Intellectual property protections go far beyond the patent system, which is only one part of the whole IP apparatus. A large part, perhaps most, of the IP produced by firms falls under the rubric of "trade secrets." A lot of what firms are most concerned with is not that somebody will infringe on a patent, but that competition will simply hire away an employee, or otherwise acquire a lot of knowledge concerning operations, plans, R&D development, etc. These kinds of concerns are huge.

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Such concerns can (and ARE) easily addressed with voluntary solutions: non-compete agreements, NDAs (&c).

By and large, trade secrets have basically no legal protection. If the CEO of Coca-Cola issues a press release with the secret formula, Coke has no basically no recourse. They might take action against the CEO, but they have no ability to prevent other companies from using that formula once it's out in the open.

Recent developments like UTSA may be a prelude to extending patent-like protections to trade secrets. This would be even worse than patents since trade secrets can be held indefinitely and are not disclosed to the public; at least things *eventually* lose their monopoly protection under patents.

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2. The merits of IP in the abstract notwithstanding, the fact is that getting rid of IP protections for any single country today is probably a terrible idea. There is a lot of evidence that the strength of IP is a huge factor in firms' decisions concerning investment and where to locate high-end processes like R&D and operational innovation. This is particularly evident in the experiences of high-flying developing countries like India and China, for which making a credible committment to IP protection has been absolutely essential.

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Yes, other places subsidize, so we must too. That's actually a tough argument. But notice, the US has a huge market of (relatively) very wealthy consumers which firms are not going to just ignore. Ultimately, it doesn't matter where the R&D is done. If there's no patent protection in the US, then it doesn't matter if you develop your new little blue pill in India or the US, it's still freely reverse-engineerable here.

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I agree that trade secrets often don't have legal protection beyond "voluntary solutions" (which are really "mandatory solutions" in many industries at this point). But the reason that NDAs have any bite is because there is a legal apparatus backing them up and ral consequences to breaking them. So, at least in academia, when people study "IP," they tend to look pretty wholistically, including also the institutions that would be essential to protecting trade secrets.

I'm not quite sure I completely follow your second point about R&D. I agree that many products will be reverse engineerable, but that doesnt make housing R&D operations unimportant for countries.