Two points against Intellectual property laws

[pvn]

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Okay...so then, do you get paid? If so, do you never feel that you've earned it? Is it always because your employer is an idiot?

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I negotiated some mutually-agreeable terms to exchange some money for some labor. Once we've negotiated a deal, I have a legitimate claim, but there is no pre-existing entitlement for me, or for the other party.

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Ah...but let's say that someone approaches your employer with the fruits of your labor and demands payment. For the fun of it, let's say that they undercut your negotiated price. Is your contract now null and void? Do you no longer have a claim to the services that you did in fact provide, despite having lived up to your end of the bargain?

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Wait, who did I provide services to?

[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.

[Coffee]

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Okay...so then, do you get paid? If so, do you never feel that you've earned it? Is it always because your employer is an idiot?

[/ QUOTE ]

I negotiated some mutually-agreeable terms to exchange some money for some labor. Once we've negotiated a deal, I have a legitimate claim, but there is no pre-existing entitlement for me, or for the other party.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ah...but let's say that someone approaches your employer with the fruits of your labor and demands payment. For the fun of it, let's say that they undercut your negotiated price. Is your contract now null and void? Do you no longer have a claim to the services that you did in fact provide, despite having lived up to your end of the bargain?

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Wait, who did I provide services to?

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The consumer...unless you think that such a thing doesn't exist for the arts or innovations...etc.

[pvn]

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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.

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Yes, and?

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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.

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I am not sure that I understand what it means for something to be important "for a country".

R&D is going to be housed wherever it makes the most sense. If region A provides monopoly/patent protection/whatever for the product to be developed and region B doesn't, what impact does this have on the decision as to where to house that R&D? The R&D gets the same protection in region B regardless of whether the engineer working on it is in region A or region B, does it not? And it clearly gets the same lack of protection in either case.

If the R&D gets more protection in region B only if it is actually developed IN region B, then we're talking about a whole new level of corporate welfare. People in region A still get the same stuff, people in region B pay extra for it.

[pvn]

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Okay...so then, do you get paid? If so, do you never feel that you've earned it? Is it always because your employer is an idiot?

[/ QUOTE ]

I negotiated some mutually-agreeable terms to exchange some money for some labor. Once we've negotiated a deal, I have a legitimate claim, but there is no pre-existing entitlement for me, or for the other party.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ah...but let's say that someone approaches your employer with the fruits of your labor and demands payment. For the fun of it, let's say that they undercut your negotiated price. Is your contract now null and void? Do you no longer have a claim to the services that you did in fact provide, despite having lived up to your end of the bargain?

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Wait, who did I provide services to?

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The consumer...unless you think that such a thing doesn't exist for the arts or innovations...etc.

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Which consumer? the "someone" who approaches my employer? or the employer?

[sam h]

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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.

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Yes, and?

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My original point was that this legal apparatus girding trade secrets through enforcing NDAs is part of governmental IP protection, and my understanding was that in your post you were saying that trade secrets were not really legally protected by IP laws.

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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.

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I am not sure that I understand what it means for something to be important "for a country".

R&D is going to be housed wherever it makes the most sense. If region A provides monopoly/patent protection/whatever for the product to be developed and region B doesn't, what impact does this have on the decision as to where to house that R&D? The R&D gets the same protection in region B regardless of whether the engineer working on it is in region A or region B, does it not? And it clearly gets the same lack of protection in either case.

If the R&D gets more protection in region B only if it is actually developed IN region B, then we're talking about a whole new level of corporate welfare. People in region A still get the same stuff, people in region B pay extra for it.

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I'm just saying that firms are generally reluctant to house R%D and many key back-office functions in places where they won't have legal recourse if trade secrets are stolen, NDAs are violated, etc. I have spoken with people or know third hand of many cases in which a company was seriously considering off-shoring functions to a place like Russia (where there is a lot of engineering talent) but decided not to do it because they realized how easily they could get [censored] and how little they could do about it.

Whether its beneficial for a country to house R&D and other higher-end functions is definitely not a cut-and-dry question, but many people think that these kinds of operations have positive spillover effects, as they require a lot of capital investment, the immigration and concentration of talented people, spin-offs and support services in the area, etc.

[pvn]

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My original point was that this legal apparatus girding trade secrets through enforcing NDAs is part of governmental IP protection, and my understanding was that in your post you were saying that trade secrets were not really legally protected by IP laws.

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They are protected though civil apparatus, just as any other contract is. Torts. Which can easily exist outside of a monopoly dispute resolution organization.

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I'm just saying that firms are generally reluctant to house R%D and many key back-office functions in places where they won't have legal recourse if trade secrets are stolen, NDAs are violated, etc.

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OK. But as we've already discussed, these things, seeing as they are accomodated by voluntary agreements, are easily protected even in the absence of specific interventionist IP law (i.e. patents). So I'm not sure what your objection here is.

[sam h]

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My original point was that this legal apparatus girding trade secrets through enforcing NDAs is part of governmental IP protection, and my understanding was that in your post you were saying that trade secrets were not really legally protected by IP laws.

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They are protected though civil apparatus, just as any other contract is. Torts. Which can easily exist outside of a monopoly dispute resolution organization.

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They are protected by the legal apparatus. It might be civil law, but its not non-governmental.

Whether such an apparatus could exist outside government is just a snoozer of an argument that has been rehashed on these boards a million times and is not really relevant. The point is that in the world today, when governments don't protect IP in this way, there is no other apparatus. That's just the empirical fact about countries like Russia. Therefore, firms don't invest. Ergo, getting rid of these protections is probably a bad idea for most countries.

[pvn]

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Whether such an apparatus could exist outside government is just a snoozer of an argument that has been rehashed on these boards a million times and is not really relevant. The point is that in the world today, when governments don't protect IP in this way, there is no other apparatus. That's just the empirical fact about countries like Russia. Therefore, firms don't invest. Ergo, getting rid of these protections is probably a bad idea for most countries.

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I agree with this. Regions in the world today, right now, where governments do not protect IP generally are areas where governmnets do not protect *property* at all, and where there is no widespread respect for property in the first place. These are generally bad areas not only for economic investment, but just about any other civilized activity.

[ShakeZula06]

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Whatever happened to the absolute right of individuals to the integrity of their property?

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An argument against IP isn't against the right to your property, it's an argument that IP doesn't exist.
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Does this mean it's ok to violate patents or drug formulas, because people will continue to invent things? Does it mean it's ok to tax people a little bit, so long as it doesn't cause them to abandon the marketplace?

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I was actually thinking about this. I consider it the other way around. That is, the money the government spends on protecting company's IP is a tax on everyone else that goes towards the artists, and getting rid of IP laws is getting rid of that law.
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I am struggling to see the moral difference in the eyes of an ACist.

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Most ACists that believe one way or the other are against most forms of IP I believe. If one can efficiently protect their ideas, they will do so using market forces. I doubt that this would be a profitable venture for most aritsts, seeing as even when they externalize the costs onto taxpayers they are unable to do so.