Incentive to create or invent isn't the actual justification for copyright and patents, neither from the perspective of the law nor economics. Copyrights are ju

Incentive to create or invent isn't the actual justification for copyright and patents, neither from the perspective of the law nor economics. Copyrights are justified as an incentive to publish and distribute, while patents are justified as an incentive to reduce to practice (i.e. actually build the thing) and disclose. However, all of that still begs the question of whether those incentives are actually necessary to achieve similar outcomes in social welfare. AFAIU, empirical evidence for patent regimes in particular seem to be equivocal at best.[1] Nonetheless, the justifications do indeed recognize that what actually matters is whether or not people do something constructive with their ideas. [1] Case in point: not only did I read the book, Against Intellectual Monopolies, I paid for a Kindle copy even though it was published gratis ;)