All intellectual property rights are just licenses granted by society because it was thought, rightly or wrongly, that society as a whole would benefit by granting them. But in any particular situation, we have to ask: are we really better off granting such license? What kind of act are we licensing a person to do?

The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful,…

The case of programs today is very different from that of books a hundred years ago. The fact that the easiest way to copy a program is from one neighbor to an…

The patent system was established to encourage inventors to disclose the details of their inventions. Its purpose was to help society rather than to help inven…