Tim Worstall

4 responses so far ↓

• 1 bgc // Nov 30, 2008 at 11:38 am

  Terence Kealey’s excellent new book ‘ Sex, Science and Profits’ argues that the main benefit of technological innovation is the potential lead time advantage of being the first innovator – and this provides sufficient (and proper) incentive for competitive institutions to pusue innovation.

  Beyond that (as Tim argues here) the general societal benefit derives from widespread copying .

  He concludes that in _most_ (not all) circumatances, patenting and similar intellectual property rights are overall a bad thing, and tend to stifle innovation.

  In general the book makes lots of interesting arguments about what really stimulates useful innovation.

  ‘Read the whole thing’, as they say…

• 2 Mark Wadsworth // Nov 30, 2008 at 1:17 pm

  Good point.

  All those politicians you yap on about subsidising “Research and development’ can stick it in their pipes and smoke it.

• 3 AntiCitizenOne // Nov 30, 2008 at 2:41 pm

  That’s why i like the idea of a intellectual property value tax, rather like an LVT.

  You set the price someone can buy the right from you and pay say 7% a year for the state protection.

  Works roughly the same as a 20 year patent, but makes it far more likely the patent holder seeks to make use of it rather than block others.

• 4 The Great Simpleton // Dec 1, 2008 at 8:31 am

  In the 60′s and 70′s we were always bemoaning the loss of our innovations and innovators to the USA. During that time it got richer a lot faster than we did.

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