IP Protection for the 21st Century

摘要

School's back In session, and the inevitable push-back from the summer's freedom has my wife and me re-establishing "the rules" with our children. Much as the kids think otherwise, we designed those rules not to make them miserable, but to raise them to become happy, well-adjusted adults. Similarly, our forefathers weren't out to make young inventors or companies miserable when they enacted this country's IP (intellectual property) pro- tection system. Indeed, patents and other IP safeguards were created to foster innovation, not squelch it. The system intentionally granted monopoly protection for a limited but fair period (14 years) to give inventors the financial incentive to create what others could later build upon. The problem is that this limited but fair period was defined in the 18th century, when just sending a message from New York to Georgia could take weeks.