'Inventiveness is good. It should be rewarded. Monopoly
power, by contrast, is bad. It should be discouraged. So what does
the patent system do? It rewards inventiveness with a licence to
monopolize. That's nuts.'
So says maverick economist, Steven E Landsburg, in More Sex is
Safer Sex (yes it's an economics book!) But mainstream
economists have no such difficulties with IP – see the
current discussion on the IP blogsite ipkittenblogspot.com. So what
exactly is the economic justification for IP? IP creates
monopolies. Yet economists are untroubled by this, certainly when
it comes to patents and copyright. There are various theories.
There's the awfully-named 'Labour-Deserve' theory,
which says you're entitled to be rewarded for your efforts
(deep stuff!). There's the 'Social Contract' theory,
which recognises that society must offer incentives to innovate,
and that it must be prepared to offer inventors and creatives a
limited monopoly in return for the benefits that
