Hot Property: The Stealing of US Ideas

New York Times (reg required): This book review of "Hot Property: The Stealing of Ideas in an Age of Globalization" by Pat Choate covers the credentials of the author as well as the mainstay of what the book is about...specifically that the "massive thefit of U.S.-owned intellectual properties" is a contributing cause of the technological decline the US has been experiencing. While I admit it may have some small influence, I think the decline rests largely on the education system. I've read numerous reports about how US students are not as competitive with their foreign counterparts as they once were...and refusing to teach evolution can't be helping either.

Anyway, Choate is at least fair in recognising that "as an industrializing nation in the 19th century the United States engaged in many of the practices that it condemns today, including industrial espionage. He recounts the tales of Samuel Slater, who brought secret British spinning machine technology to the United States, and Francis Cabot Lowell, a Boston patrician who used his photographic memory to steal the trade secrets of British textile manufacturers. ''The most important feature of the Patent Act of 1793,'' Choate writes, ''was what it did not provide: protections for foreign inventors. Only American citizens were eligible for a U.S. patent. Thus, any American could bring a foreign innovation to the United States and commercialize the idea, all with total legal immunity.'' In later generations, Germany and Japan similarly manipulated intellectual property rights."

Finally, Choate makes the claim that "Piracy and counterfeiting impede innovation: thieves do not invest in research, design, production, development or advertising". This is true, but I don't think it's an absolute. For example, most technical innovations that could be used for copyright infringement were fought by the copyright industry (the latest being p2p, of course), and they've often resulted in increased sales and increased revenue for the copyright owners. On the other side, relying on a popular copyrighted character (for example, Mickey Mouse) can make copyright holders lazy in producing other characters, not to mention that many patents impede innovation by making research and development more difficult.

Comments

[Luke Maciak]

Wow... This is funny! I always thought that the technological decline in US is caused precisely by our idiotic views on such things as "intelectual property".

Take patents for example. Our patent law is so screwed up at this point that you cannot start producing a new proprietary software in US without doing in depth patent research and figuring workarounds for silly patents on trivial technology.