intellectual property

Todays top BBC story is the race to bring a new anti-cancer drug to market. Big drug companies are pouring vast resources into this, knowing that they can make huge profits. Yet patents will expire after 20 years. The 20 year patent rule is a very good rule. It works. It brings great profit to the creators of an idea, and then gives the idea free to everyone within a reasonable time. So everybody wins!

The principle behind the concept of ownership is to reward the creation of wealth. The key is to also reward society, because a lot of your wealth depends on society's markets and laws. Land rent does this for easy-to-measure property like land. A twenty year patent laws does this for hard-to-measure intellectual property. The same argument should apply to copyright laws.

Twenty year patents and copyrights - land rent for intellectual property.