On Tue, 2009-07-07 at 09:22 -0700, Michael Perelman wrote: > The damage done by intellectual property goes well beyond the > prevention of the downloading of music. Yesterday's story about a > Goldman Sachs employee downloading proprietary information was not > exactly an example of a violation of intellectual property laws, but > rather a theft of trade secrets -- perhaps a distinction without a > difference.
Trades secrets are traditionnally included in intellectual property, and wikipedia page follows this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Property IP laws all create property/monopoly-like rights on non rival goods but the specific details of each part of IP are widely different. > Below, is a story about Toyota, supposedly benign force in the green > economy by virtue of the Prius. Here is another side of the story in > which Toyota is using intellectual property to make competition > difficult. Presence of IP law means no competition and no free market, always. IP is the most potent form of protectionism ever invented. In the specific case of green technologies there's a big fight between USA and most of the rest of the world, it's obviously not reported by USA mainstream medias but easy to find elsewhere: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/business/americas/2009/06/24/213538/U.S.-draws.htm << U.S. draws line with China on green technology access WASHINGTON -- Access to green technology is becoming a growing stumbling block in global efforts to fight climate change, with U.S. lawmakers bristling at what they see as China's attempt to “steal” U.S. know-how. China and India have led calls for developed nations to share technology to help them battle global warming as the clock ticks to a December meeting in Copenhagen meant to seal a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. The U.S. House of Representatives this month unanimously voted to make it U.S. policy to prevent the Copenhagen treaty from “weakening” U.S. intellectual property rights on a wind, solar and other eco-friendly technologies. Congressman Rick Larsen, a member of President Barack Obama's Democratic Party who authored the measure, said the United States was caught between concern both over the climate and its soaring trade deficit with China. [...] >> USA is pushing for absurdly extremist IP measure all over the world, it's understandable in a mercantilist framework on the trade deficit. As Dean Baker often remind us, near all USA economists are mercantilists/protectionists in that they're strongly pro-IP. But of course, sooner than later, the USA will get negative on even its IP trade (think many remote country firm suing big name USA firm for patent violations) and then that's the end of IP. Happy end for sure, but lots of damage in the way. Laurent http://guerby.org/blog _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
