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I'm not sure anyone would ever claim that patents are morally justified. Their justification is cultural, in a sense. They are there that invention is worth it.

I'm not sure anyone would ever claim that patents are morally justified. Their justification is cultural, in a sense. They are there that invention is worth it. Invention and innovation, in turn, bring about advances for the entire culture that has surrendered these specific rights, because it sees more value in progress than in the rights that are given up for it. I don't know whether a culture without patents would still advance and have as many inventors, but on the surface, this sounds like a reasonable trade-off. I would restrict patent law to force a patent holder to license their patents to whomever for a reasonable price. We already have that for standards relevant patents, but i think it should apply to all patents.

air 14y ago
"I'm not sure anyone would ever claim that patents are morally justified." Objectivists do that: Rand argued that limited intellectual property monopolies being granted to certain inventors and artists on a first-to-file basis as moral because she viewed all property as fundamentally intellectual. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_%28Ayn_Rand%29#Politics:_individual_rights_and_capitalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_%28Ayn_Rand%29#Poli...
brazzy 14y ago
There is a second justification for patents that often gets overlooked: in order to patent an innovation, you have to exactly describe that innovation, and this discription is made public, and after the patent expires everyone is free to use it. Without this, there would be a strong incentive to keep innovations secret as much as possible, which may have them end up being lost.