I love smartphones. Every time I use my Motorola Droid in the back of my mind I still marvel at the technology and how portable it is. I have preferences in mobile OS operating systems. and manufacturers but I won't be discussing them here. Today I'd like to talk about one area where I have yet to fully form a concise opinion on but never the less I have many ideas about, the patent system.
My interest in discussing the subject of the patent system comes from reading a recent article from the Wall Street Journal talking about the fact that NTP Inc. (a patent holding company) has
recently filed a suit against
Apple, Google, HTC Corp, LG Electronics Inc, Microsoft Corp. and Motorola Inc over patents held by NTP over the wireless delivery of email. If you look again at that list you'll notice that it includes pretty much every manufacturer of smartphone though RIM, and HP/Palm are noticeably absent because it's already brought suits against them. There is also a pending suit against AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless from 2007.
My issue with patents is that unlike physical property which they are often compared to, patents are ideas. The may be used to create a physical product but they are not a product themselves just as ideas are not. How do you own ideas? How can you expect others to pay for an idea which is the way firms like NTP work. Patents are bestowed to companies and individuals for their ideas by governments which means the state has positive rights view over the right to thought, that I find to be incredibly dangerous and constitutes a violation of our natural rights. If I were to come up with a way to send email to my phone I don't have a right to that idea because NTP already has it. If you think that patents are about specific ways you doing things then I don't think you understand just how vague patents can be.
Here is where I run into one of my disagreements with a person who is one of the largest influences on my ideas Ayn Rand. She for all of her greatness she contradicts many of her own ideas with a surprisingly pro positive rights and anti free market position on on patents.....
"As an objection to the patent laws, some people cite the fact that two inventors may work independently for years on the same invention, but one will beat the other to the patent office by an hour or a day and will acquire an exclusive monopoly, while the loser's work will then be totally wasted. This type of objection is based on the error of equating the potential with the actual. The fact that a man might have been first, does not alter the fact that he wasn't. Since the issue is one of commercial rights, the loser in a case of that kind has to accept the fact that in seeking to trade with others he must face the possibility of a competitor winning the race, which is true of all types of competition." - From Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: New American Library, 1967), p. 133.
My problem with this statement is that patents are through their design, anti-competitive. Patents are government given monopolies for an idea and represent of intervention by the government in the markets, changing the nature of competition. It is often said that patents exist to entice inventors to create because they make the inventor stand to benefit more from their creation. However does that necessitate positive rights theory? The idea that the government creates rights and that conversely gives it the right to say what rights you do or do not have.
What I'm basically hitting upon is the time honored debate of government being a necessary evil. Does patent law represent a necessary evil, even to those who support a free market? I'm still in the process of deciding my opinion on it, but I am always skeptical of evil being able to do good but even for those who believe it can then they usually believe it should be restrained. The belief in restraining government was held reverently by the founders of the United States but over two hundred years of history hove shown that it is no longer a common belief and the lack of it I fear will bring untold misery.
