Patent Ridiculousness

New at Reason: Ron Bailey looks into patent abuse, insurance in an age of known predispositions, and other neat stuff, in his next report from the BIO 2003 conference.

Comments

[Kevin Carson]

Whoa, Gawd-a-mighty! I've got to give credit where credit is due. Anytime Ron takes a critical view of over-exploiting patents, he deserves a gold star. I guess this is a Nixon to China kind of thing.

But the IP provisions of GATT (Uruguay) go far beyond enforcing traditional patent rights on a global scale, or even drastically increasing their duration. It actually brings the WTO star chamber (the same kinds of people sitting in BRUSSELS, for crying out loud) into the business of enforcing trade secrets, which used to be a private responsibility. In the old days, patenting a technology at least meant the research was open to public scrutiny where it could suggest potentially fruitful parallel lines of research.

The logical next step, I guess, is for the State to loan detachments of the Gestapo to corporate HR departments for help in internal policing. Maybe we need a new round of GATT to set up policies against whistle-blowing, or flipping off the surveillance cameras, enforceable by the WTO. You can have an ATF pig making you piss in the cup.

[Matt Squelch]

It's simple, the WTO is bunk just like the UN or any other "trans-, supra-, multi-" institutional entity cuz, good luck enforcing your pronouncements from on high, we're -- meaning any nation that wants to and is capable of -- going to do it anyway (and say we didn't). To believe otherwise is just naive.

[Graziano Laura]

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DATE: 01/26/2004 06:22:32
Truth is not determined by majority vote