We have been educated from an early age to copy theft, piracy is a crime, and intellectual property, like property and deposits, is legally protected property. In my country, the patents act, the copyright act, has long established a legal barrier to intellectual property rights and severely combats piracy, protecting both the legitimate rights and interests of innovators and infusing innovation into social development. But the economics community has always had different voices, and the austrian economics community has offered different perspectives on the intellectual property system from a unique bottom-up logic。
This does not negate the existing intellectual property protection system, but rather talks about the balance between innovation protection and knowledge dissemination from an academic perspective. After all, no system is perfect, and continuous improvement and circumvention in practice is the key to development. This paper is a mere exchange of ideas from the austrian perspective and does not constitute any legal proposal. Under our legal framework, copying and piracy are always illegal and are punishable by law。
The core of property rights is scarcity, and knowledge is essentially shared
The first thing to understand is to go back to the core issue: why does human beings need to define property rights
The answer is not an abstract “natural human right”, but is based on objective scarcity. One apple, and i'll have less of it; a piece of land, which you use to build, i can't plant. Physical goods are exclusive in physical space, and in order to avoid resource competition and social exclusion from the law of the jungle, we need to establish clear ownership rights, essentially in order to settle disputes and resolve the distribution of scarce resources。
But ideas, knowledge, creativity are fundamentally different from physical objects — they are not scarce. I learned how to make wheels, and your technology doesn't just disappear; i read your article, and you still have access to it. Knowledge can be replicated indefinitely, with marginal costs of reproduction almost zero, without actual loss to the original holder as a result of being acquired and disseminated by others。
This is the core point of departure of the austrian perspective: since knowledge itself is not scarce and does not create a conflict of resources at the physical level, there is a substantive difference between copying and theft in the physical sense. The theft directly reduces the property of the original owner, while the copying breaks the exclusive right of knowledge holders, which is one of the core arguments of the school。
Behind intellectual property protection is the balance between real property rights and intellectual exclusive rights
The central rationale for supporting intellectual property protection has been to “incentive innovators and encourage more people to engage in research and development”. But austrian economics offers another perspective: how can the relationship with real property rights be balanced in the protection of intellectual exclusive rights
To give a simple example, i have paid for computers, paper, 3d printers, and, in legal terms, i have full ownership of the property of these entities, which in theory can be used freely for creative and productive purposes. But the existence of the intellectual property regime sets the legal boundary for this freedom — i cannot copy the original creations of others in my own ink, and i cannot mark parts of other registered patents with 3d printers。
From an austrian perspective, this is intended to protect intellectual innovation by imposing reasonable limits on the use of real property. But it also raises the question of how to grasp limits. If the scope and duration of patent protection are too broad, would there be some restriction on the reasonable use of physical property
In fact, the answer to this question has long been given in legal practice: intellectual property protection is not borderless, but has a clear legal scope and duration, taking into account the public interest. Patents, for example, have a clear duration of protection, when they fall into the public domain and become the common heritage of all humankind; they are also excluded from the scope of abuse by reasoned references, personal learning and use, protecting both innovators and public access to knowledge。
The practice of intellectual property regimes is painful: the thinking about patent abuse and administrative costs
It is undeniable that any system will have problems in practice, and that the intellectual property regime is no exception, which is the focus of the australasia economics, and that these issues have been the focus of the country's efforts to continuously improve the intellectual property system in recent years。
The first is the administrative cost of operating the system. In order to protect intellectual property rights, we need professional intellectual property audit bodies, public prosecution systems to invest resources to combat abuse, and cross-border arbitration mechanisms to deal with foreign intellectual property disputes. The operation of these institutions requires the consumption of a certain amount of social resources, and how intellectual property protection can be made more efficient by optimizing processes, improving efficiency and reducing the cost of operating the system is an issue that countries are exploring。
The second is the problem of patent abuse, most typically the phenomenon of “patent hooligans” who are stigmatized. Such subjects themselves do not engage in research and development, do not produce products, specialize in the acquisition of various types of patents at a low price, and then seek substantial compensation from entities through malicious advocacy and litigation, forcing a number of enterprises to divert research and development funds to litigation and crowding out innovative inputs。
Of even greater concern is the fact that patent monopolies in some areas may also give rise to livelihood problems. For example, the patent protection of some life-saving drugs, while guaranteeing the return on research and development by pharmaceutical companies, may also lead to high prices of medicines, making it difficult for some low-income groups to bear. This is also why countries make special arrangements in the field of pharmaceutical patents, such as our drug patent link system, the patent compulsory licensing system, which protects both the motivation of the pharmaceutical industry and the public's demand for medicines at a critical time, while india's model of generic pharmaceuticals is an option in specific national contexts。
These issues are not a matter of the intellectual property regime itself, but of loopholes in its operation. In recent years, our country has also been working continuously to address these pains by putting in place standard anti-monopoly guidelines, strengthening anti-monopoly and anti-improper competition enforcement, vigorously combating malicious patent advocacy, improving the intellectual property protection system and making intellectual property protection fairer and more rational。
Thinking in history: patent protection is not the only engine of innovation
Many of the views of austrian economics can be found in history, and these historical cases also give us a deeper thought to “innovation and protection”。
Watts of the improved steam engine, after patenting their own inventions, have invested a lot of effort in patent protection for decades, and many inventors who want to improve steam engine technology have been restricted by patent problems, which has led to the slow development of steam engine technology in the united kingdom for quite some time. It was not until the expiry of the watt patent that steam engine technology developed in such a way as to be a central driver of the industrial revolution。
The leyt brothers' flight patents, which also limited the development of early aviation technology due to high licence fees and stringent rights, allowed the united states aviation industry to be turned over by europe until the compulsory opening of patents during world war i and the rapid development of american aviation technology。
These historical cases tell us that patent protection can provide rewards for innovators, but excessive patent monopolies can be an obstacle to innovation. The real engine of innovation has never been just the benefits of patent protection, but also the vagaries of market competition, the uncharted desire of humans to explore and the inspiration of knowledge sharing。
This is evident in fashion and in the food industry: clothing styles, recipes for vegetables, with little or no strict patent protection, remain highly innovative in both areas. Designers continue to introduce new styles, cooks continue to develop new foods, with the core driving force being the competitive advantage of the market — the innovation power of “first-in-first-in-first-out” who can take the lead in introducing new ideas that meet consumer needs。
Protecting innovation and sharing knowledge is never an option
From the perspective of austrian economics, we see deep thinking behind the intellectual property system; and from the practice of the rule of law and social development in our country, we see more clearly the centrality of intellectual property protection。
The protection of intellectual property rights is the protection of innovation, which is a proven truth. Social development loses its core dynamic if innovations are readily copied and pirated and no one is willing to invest time, money and energy in research and development. The protection of intellectual property rights in our country has continued to increase in recent years, from the chain-wide fight against abuses such as piracy, piracy and video to the improvement of the institutional rules for antimonopoly and anti-patent abuse, to the optimization of the intellectual property audit process and the improvement of the efficiency of protection, to the establishment of a firm and innovative rule of law barrier that allows innovators to innovate and wish to innovate。
At the same time, however, we also need to confront the problem of intellectual property regimes in practice, constantly improving them and balancing the protection of innovation with the dissemination of knowledge. For example, by reducing the duration of patent protection in some areas, improving the system of compulsory licensing of patents, severely combating the malicious defence of patents, and allowing knowledge to be disseminated as rationally as possible, while protecting innovation, so that more people can benefit from advances in knowledge。
The austrian perspective on economics provides us with a window to revisit the intellectual property system, not to deny intellectual property protection, but to remind us that any system needs to be optimized in practice and find the most appropriate balance for its national context。
In my country, the intellectual property protection system has always been dynamically balanced between “protection of innovation” and “sharing of knowledge”, both to protect innovators and to open the way for the dissemination of knowledge, which is the key to sustainable social progress. After all, the ultimate goal of innovation is to make knowledge work for humanity and to keep societies moving forward。
Important statement at the end of the text
This paper explores academic perspectives from the perspective of the austrian school of economics. It is a mere exchange of ideas that does not represent mainstream values, nor does it negate the protection of intellectual property rights in our patent laws, such as the copyright act. In my country, violations of intellectual property rights, such as copying, piracy and so forth, are always illegal and will be severely punished by law and condemned in good public order. The protection of intellectual property rights is a legal obligation of every citizen and a shared responsibility to promote innovative social development。
