THE NATURAL LAW REGARDING TRADEMARKS, COPYRIGHTS, AND PATENTS Abstract, or so ca

THE NATURAL LAW REGARDING TRADEMARKS, COPYRIGHTS, AND PATENTS

Abstract, or so called, “Intellectual Property”.

There are three forms of ‘abstract property’ if we speak operationally:

1) Trademarks. A trademark serves as a weight and measure preventing fraud, as well as seizing and unearned opportunity, by fraudulent representation. The test of trademark is quite simple. If in three seconds a randomly selected group of jurors can confuse the two, it is a trademark violation. Otherwise not. This is simply empirical. Trademarks are necessary for the prevention of fraud, and violation of the requirement for productive fully informed warrantied exchange. (BTW: lots of research on this subject from different disciplines.)

2) Copyrights. A copyright serves as a means of preventing the unearned profits from the works of others, and the taxes earned from it to pay for enforcement. Copyright both violates natural law by providing subsidy rather than just preventing unearned gains (violation of reciprocity for productivity), and by externality violates natural law, through the creation of moral hazard, and the financing of literature that violates natural law. For this reason, the Copyright can and should be replaced by trademark, which will not prevent copying for personal use, but will prevent unreciprocated earnings. Ergo, the current Creative Commons license serves as a trademark that must be licensed in order to perform reciprocity. As a side benefit, when combined with the requirement for testimonial truth in the commons (market), this will defund the entertainment industry, the advertising industry, the publishing industry, the privatization of research performed via public funds.

3) Patents. Assuming a patent is applied for and issued as a means of producing goods that cannot be produced by market means otherwise, an exclusive license to recoup investments and produce multiples of returns is a useful means by which the population can encourage research and development using off-book financing. However, production in the normal course of business, and research and development are very different things. Therefore patents should only be granted in exchange for shares in the product producing returns for the population. And patents should be granted only for those goods that have some such public function. And a patent cannot be used to deny a product or service or information from the market, nor to control the prices of products and services and information on the market.

In other words, a trademark functions as a weight and measure. A copyright as a trademark. and a few patents as contracts with the common people for assisting in the research and development of those goods, services, and information, that cannot be produced because of great expense and low chances of success.