Objectivism 101

Lesson 7: Three political examples

The case of patents

Patents are confirmation of the right of property, applied to intellectual property. They apply to the product of man's work, specifically his intellectual work.

Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights : a man's right to the product of his mind.

If we have the right to own "material" resources, we also have the right to own "intellectual" resources. Both are the product of man's mind, and indeed no resources would exist without the knowledge of how to produce them.

Without patents, we would find ourselves in a more or less anarchic system as regards to intellectual property. Some companies do not use patents to protect their inventions and use contracts instead, especially in the software industry. But this only offers limited protection, and puts the risk and expenses squarely on the shoulders of the originating company.

As we now begin to have the ability to manipulate the nature of natural resources with DNA, this opens up a whole new set of patent issues. The current governmental behavior of patenting genes, while rejecting patents on new organisms, is absurd.
Naturally-made things such as genes cannot be patented, as they are not produced by man. But organisms can be patented, since their genetic patterns are made by man. As such, our current states have it all backwards.

It is important to note (...) that a discovery cannot be patented, only an invention. A scientific or philosophical discovery, which identifies a law of nature, a principle or a fact of reality not previously known, cannot be the exclusive property of the discoverer because : (a) he did not create it, and (b) if he cares to make his discovery public, claiming it to be true, he cannot demand that men continue to pursue or practice falsehoods except by his permission.

These quotes, and more reading on this subject, can be found in the "Patents and Copyrights" article, by Ayn Rand, in Capitalism : The Unknown Ideal (p130-134).

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