Table of Contents
Written by : Kenneth Blackmer |
Current : 1620 |
Write a comment |
Write a comment
hello hello and thank you for tuning in and welcome to the iea's youtube channel my name is alexander hammond a policy analyst here at the institute of economic affairs and today we are hosting another video in a series in a new series of debates this time looking at the forny issue of intellectual property rights now one of the most exciting things i find about working in a think tank is you often meet people who wouldn't usually consider themselves ideological allies peers but on some issues you find big issues that they completely disagree with each other and when it comes to intellectual property that is one of the big issues classical liberals tend to see property rights as one of the most important features of a free society however for reasons that i'm sure that we'll find out today in this debate when it comes to intellectual property rights libertarians and free marketeers of all stripes just can't seem to agree it's the debate that's gone on for decades if not centuries now intellectual property can be defined quite broadly but it's usually considered to be the legal right that provides creators protection for original work inventions developments artistic works and and so on and usually when we talk about ip we're referring to copyrights patents trade secrets trademarks and for some classical liberals intellectual property and their rights surrounding them it just serves as a logical extension of traditional property rights and they serve as the bedrock for our economic prosperity and innovation and personal freedoms whereas for other classical liberals intellectual property is just a government-conferred right not a natural one that encourages political rent-seeking restricts liberty and hinders both economic growth and inner innovation so to debate whether ip should exist at all i'm sure to be joined by two fantastic guests first up we are delighted to be joined by a dear friend of eia the formidable professor terence keeley now terence is an adjunct scholar at the cater institute in washington dc he formerly served as a vice chancellor at the university of buckiam the uk's oldest and premier private university for many years terence lectured in clinical biochemistry at the university of cambridge and he is well known for his outspoken opposition to the public funding of science and we at the ia are very very lucky to have him sit on our academic advisory council too now i'm not putting words in terrence's mouth but terence broadly believes that instead of bringing prosperity and increased innovation intellectual property rights are in fact theft and the patents uh patents being the type of ip used to prevent an invention being created sold or used by another party are just a downright menace terence welcome to the channel thank you and our next guest who will be making the case for intellectual property uh rights that is not intellectual property in general um is back with us in fighting form after his first round debate with victoria hewson on the topic of lockdown just a couple of weeks ago he's the ia's very own head of lifestyle economics and a fan favorite here on our youtube chris snowden now contrary to terrence's thoughts chris believes ip is crucial in providing an incentive for us to create new things useful things that benefit us all he has previously written quote there should be no argument over a basic principle that people should be rewarded for ideas that make the world a better place and in 2019 i don't know if he was predicting covered at this point he said quote why spend millions of dollars developing a new medicine or vaccine when it is going to be copied by rival pharmaceutical company immediately so that's chris's thoughts chris welcome to the channel nice to be here so because intellectual property rights are such a big issue i think it's best to start of incentives we always hear intellectual property rights are crucial for incentives without them why would we do why do we create new products terence tell me your thoughts on this why are incentives not a key factor when it comes to intellectual property um the whole point of intellectual property in form of patents is people take them out to stop others doing research patents are a way in which you can protect what you've already achieved and you hope that by taking out a patent you won't have to do any more research and you can stop other people doing research the incentive to do research is very simple if you don't do research you go bust it's we are told that we need to give people temporary monopolies in their research because if they don't have those monopolies they're not incentivized to do research it's exactly the other way around people are incentivized to do research because if they don't they will simply go robust and so the answer to the question if someone says to you i'm not going to do research unless i have intellectual property the answer to that statement is fine see how long before you go bust patents are a hangover from medieval patents when the entire economy was monopolized from salt to soap and they represent a misunderstanding of private property rights they all agree in private property rights in goods that are private but ideas are not private goods ideas are what we call contribution goods they are non-rivalrous but excludable and therefore the concept of private property rights in ideas is different from an objective thing like a piece of land and they are they survive purely as a typical medieval anti-competitive trick um okay you've put it very uh to the point there and chris what do you make of that are incentives important in regards to intellectual property rights if so where is terence going wrong well we consider them important when it comes to standard property rights and i think sometimes people find it more intuitive that if you buy physical products or if you make a physical product that that belongs to you and that's some sort of natural right as it were where whereas as terence said you know an idea is more of a sort of ethereal thing an invention it's kind of related to a an idea yeah a song you know these things are you know in in the ether ready to be snatched by paul mccartney or what have you i mean i think they they are basically the same thing um the property rights are not in fact natural there are tribes of hunter-gatherers who don't believe in property rights there are of course communists who have tried to have societies without property rights that don't work terribly well the reason that we have property rights in the physical sense um they're man-made and they've been around for so long because they serve a very useful purpose and that is to incentivize hard work and creativity and if people couldn't keep what they'd made they wouldn't bother doing it exactly the same principle applies to intellectual property for the most part if you exclude um you know uh very rich people who have just chosen to go off and and look a particular issue for the most part uh people want to oh they need to be paid for what they do if you're a musician or an author uh or indeed a scientist for the most part you
Thanks for your comment Walter Zoucha, have a nice day.
- Kenneth Blackmer, Staff Member
hello and welcome to the second lecture intellectual property and marketing so this lecture is about giving you the tools and the means to protect your creative talent and turning it into a business so intellectual property was something that was shared so and the first thing the most important thing is you need to have a registered business to be able to to register it and to protect it in the past it was possible for people to buy books from some countries and translate them and pretend they were their books and sell them in another country that is what this picture is trying to show and that created intellectual property wars between countries well that is not the case now because their copyright laws but in a way it is very important to protect your intellectual property but to do that you need to have a formal registered business so that is the first step now what is the content of this lecture first we will talk about the importance of intellectual property rights second the types of intellectual property rights and the third would business decisions you need to make that are influencing that are related to intellectual property rights so let's look at the first point the importance of intellectual property rights what are they the same from George Brainerd show in a way explain so if I have an apple and you have an apple and I give you my Apple where you have two apples and I have none but if I have one idea and you have one idea and I tell you my idea and you tell me your idea we both have two ideas so and that is the thing with intellectual property it can be shared it's not tangible so I can take the idea you gave me with me anywhere I go it's not tangible it's something intellectual it's non-rivalrous so lots of people can use it I can share my deal with everyone in the world potentially everyone can use it if I want to and it's not excludable so many it can be imitated so if I give you my idea well you can share it to other people you can transfer it so it and that is typical now that is good about intellectual property but that is where most of the problems come from so how important are they if we look at the Standard & Poor 500 companies what are they they're the top 500 biggest companies in the world we see how across many many years in 78 till 2010 they have changed from having fixed assets to having intangible assets what are intangible assets there are intellectual property in other words they are things that are very similar to your creative outputs so instead of being measured based on their number of buildings or machines now they are measured based on the number of creative designs patterns intellectual property and so on so if you are in this business of creative industries so if you do any creative work as an architect as a designer as a programmer you see that you have a growing place in the market not only as a start-up small entrepreneur but also among top top companies because you can see how almost 80% of what of their net worth of their value consists of what you do even on a small scale but that is what they need as well so and that is what they do that is why we say that we live in the knowledge society so what can intellectual property rights do for you of stop you doing I will post the link to the video on the system but take some time to think about this question what can intellectual property do for you or stop your doing if you can you can post the video you can think about you to write something make some notes if you are taking this course with someone else try to have a discussion before moving on because it is very useful that you you you think about what what you're listening
Thanks Jerold your participation is very much appreciated
- Kenneth Blackmer
About the author
I've studied curator at University of Jamestown in Jamestown and I am an expert in mass communication. I usually feel hopeful. My previous job was chaplain (prison, military, hospital) I held this position for 4 years, I love talking about kitesurfing and fighting. Huge fan of Edward R. Murrow I practice luge and collect sports memorabilia.
Try Not to laugh !
Joke resides here...