On 02 Aug 2004 16:48:43 GMT, (MKloepster)
vaguely proposed a theory
.......and in reply I say!:

remove ns from my header address to reply via email

Sure, in theory, but the distinction between allowing someone to "fairly
profit" and granting a license to gouge is more than a little subjective.

Any protection system will allow somebody to profit unfairly, if
people are willing to pay. But free-for-all markets will hurt somebody
who has spent time developing.

Again, people were innovating long before the advent of intellectual property
as a concept--they entered the market and took their chances while others were
free to improve upon the design.

But a lot of that went on before there was such availability of
mass-production, and before we had such rapid transmission of
information. The Patent idea came into being because it became needed.
I would imagine there are court cases and battles that brought it to
life.

If you absolutely insist on injecting
government into the process, why not simply legislate a "reasonable" (i.e.,
low) maximum licensing duty and allow all willing to pay the license to the
inventor to produce the product? This would still be artificial and
anticompetetive, but it would also still grant some exclusive profit to
inventors and, I think, decrease overal cost and time to market for most
products and services.

I agree with you that there are markets out there that are gouging
under protection, and maybe there _is_ a need for price regulation.
Don, you say that the matket should decide and people simply do not
buy. What about medicines? They are probably the most fearful, the
most innovative and the most gouged area. People do not feel that they
have a choice.

How can an agreed license fee be anticompetitive? It is, as you say, a
good working idea for a system, guaranteeing income for the developer,
and encouraging them to move on to other things while tyhe market
sorts out who makes the previous products.

There is one small niggle. Don't you need some system to prove that
you _deserve_ that license fee?

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It's not the milk and honey we hate. It's having it
rammed down our throats.