Matthew’s Thoughts on Copyrights and Patents

 

For young entrepreneurs today there is a mounting issue that does not seem to be going away any time soon. While the general public may not be aware trolls are controlling our current patent system, and no I do not mean the type that you see under a bridge. These patent trolls are companies and wealthy individuals that file vague patents so that they can sue inventors who may accidently create something that a troll has a patent on. For this exact reason our patent and copyright system is currently in danger and while it may seem like we have a great system, the companies with more money and power are stopping inventors from having creative freedom, due to the fear of companies taking all profits. This idea is lengthened upon in The Economist article “Trolls on the Hill”. The reason I began to open with the facts of patent trolls is because I believe this is vital information in the understanding of patent and copyright analysis. Not only do we see issues in inventions, but also in the media industry there has been a shift away of how to handle fraud and stealing of property.

Currently if I was to log online I would have the ability to illegally download books, movies, and TV shows, all three goods that usually cost a lot to purchase.  With the surfacing of Internet piracy, firms have moved away from outright purchases of shows to subscription services that stream the shows to any device. For these reasons media conglomerates don’t see a need to care about piracy, due to advanced advertising techniques they make all the money they need through streaming, substantially driving down costs for songs, movies, and TV shows. But one major form of mass-market entertainment, books are keeping their prices at a high cost. Due to the fact streaming books is not widely done, books are not held in the same pricing scheme as other media. While books are cheaper to produce there is not true way to reap the same profits from books and movies. The difference in means of profits creates a divide between the two.

Now when it comes to valuating a patent or a piece of media what truly decides it is how well the item will end up selling for. While it may be the easy way out to say the market decides a price, they truly do decide the price. By either buying or not buying a product at a certain price the market lets the companies know whether or not it was an acceptable price. To say an idea has value also hold meaning considering if a concept is great then people will pay a lot for the idea, and they will pay for a great concept even if it doesn’t work out. When dealing with patents and copyrights it’s a difficult situation due to the fact that people’s ideas and livelihoods are truly at stake when they put them into copyrights or patents. In the next few years due to technological advances I expect a reform of the patent and copyright market.

Intellectual Property Rights

The idea that people should be entitled to their ideas is grounded in logic. People cannot be made to think a certain way and their ideas cannot be removed from within the depths of their minds. Therefore, to protect intellectual property rights is only logical. If I invent a character that grosses millions of dollars in revenue over a five year period, I don’t want others to use my character as a medium of conveyance of their personal beliefs. Thus, I believe that if I create a character, write a show or a movie, invent a slogan, write a book, or produce another creation that I can without a doubt say was a result of my creative genius, I am entitled to the protection of my creation, just as the inventor of a new lawn mower is entitled to the production of his lawn mower type. The two main issues with intellectual property rights are duration and international inconsistency.

To begin my analysis, I’ll start with the latter of the two aforementioned issues. Intellectual property rights and laws within the United States are fairly extensive and for the most part reliable. However, when one enters Europe, the laws are not as strict as they are within the United States. Should I produce a movie titled “Androsis Enters Rome” I could be confident in knowing that nobody could write a sequel “Androsis Dies a Painful Death” during my lifetime without my written consent. However, nobody could stop an Iraqi from producing this movie. While the sale of this movie within the United States would be illegal, it would be impossible to inhibit the producer in Iraq from producing this sequel. Without an international set of property rights laws, it would be unfeasible to attempt any legal action on such an individual. So while I can be sure that nobody within the US produces a sequel to my box office hit, I can never be sure a man in Iraq won’t do so.

Also, another issue that is frequently brought up when it comes to intellectual property rights is duration. The scale to which this has grown is ridiculous. Within the United States a person can hold intellectual property rights on something long after their death. This is insane!! Innovation can only occur when others are allowed to expand upon past inventions, that is the nature of innovation. On top of that, if the inventor of a movie character is part of a company and the man dies, oftentimes the company will gain their intellectual property rights and thus continue to keep from the world the freedom to improve their ideas. I am not opposed to a man holding rights to something until their death, but beyond that, I believe their knowledge and creations should be released and available to the public to ensure continued innovation and to grow their creations even further. This, I believe, is reasonable.