九乡新闻网铝合金玻璃门定额:知识产权真的很重要吗？秋风
来源：百度文库 编辑：九乡新闻网 时间：2024/04/28 12:37:42
微软是否应公开其源代码？Napster让网友随意下载歌曲的做法是否违法？购物网站模仿亚马逊的网上购物模式，是否侵犯了贝佐斯的权利？
这些都是最有趣的问题，同时也是国内商业和国际贸易领域中引发大量争端的问题。相应地，在学术界，包括专利权及版权、商标权等在内的知识产权问题，也引起了广泛的争议，并且涉及到经济学的一些基本问题：保护知识产权是否在人为制造垄断？保护知识产权是否必然会促进知识和技术创新，从而推动经济增长？对于经济增长来说，知识产权保护是否是必不可少的？目前各国的对于知识产权的保护，是否已经太过分了？拒绝政府的保护，由市场机制自发运转，能否起到同样的鼓励创新的结果？
坦率地说，国内围绕这个问题的争论棗比如当年有关是否应当保护微软知识产权的辩论棗中，充满了强烈的道德激情。笔者对此没有专门研究，也没有确定的立场。本文只是简单介绍一段学术公案，或许有助于读者从更纯粹的知识和思想角度了解这场旷日持久的争论的确切含义。
经济学家与魔鬼的交易
明尼阿波利斯联邦储备银行去年3月发表了本行顾问、明尼苏达大学经济学教授米歇尔·博德林与加州大学洛杉矶分校艾智仁经济学理论讲座教授戴维·莱文的一篇报告《完全竞争性的创新》（Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine，Perfectly Competitive Innovation，http://minneapolisfed.org/research/sr/sr303.html），他们建构了一个报酬保持恒定条件下创新与经济增长的竞争性模型。他们的观点引起了广泛的注意，因为他们的观点有点惊世骇俗：版权、专利权等等政府授予的权利不仅强化了垄断，还会造成附带损害，即获专利保护的产品高价低质，妨碍未来的创新。而充分竞争的市场完全能够奖励（从而激励）创新活动，因而版权和专利权完全是多余的。
这样的看法完全跟经济学主流的经济增长理论唱了反调。50年代，罗伯特·索罗通过研究证明了，技术变革是经济增长的主要动力，但他的模型将技术变革视为一个给定变量，是由纯粹经济力量之外的因素决定的。60年代，肯尼斯·阿罗等人分析了市场与技术变革之间的关系，他们得出结论：自由市场不能带来最优水平的创新。阿罗给出了三个理由，来说明为什么完备竞争不能在创新活动实现资源的最优配置：“我们之所以断言，自由企业经济在发明创造与研究上投资不足（与理想状态相比），是因为这样的投资是有风险的，是因为其产品只能在很有限的程度上做到相称得到正确的评价，也因为使用中会出现报酬递增。”
风险问题是显而易见的，毋须多说。第二个问题是不对等性（inappropriability），也即一项发明创造者从该创造中得到的收益与社会从中得到的收益不相称。比如，我发明了轮子，只能挣到1000元，而全人类却能从中得到无穷好处，那我会不会去尝试发明它？很可能不会。当然，用界定清晰的财产权法律可以解决这一问题。
最重大的难题是不可分割性。也就是说，一项发明创造，你先得前期花费大量开销（时间或金钱），才能有一首歌、一个方程式或一本书。而在此之后，复制起来却只要一点点成本，这样就会出现报酬递增现象。比如，最初你投入100万才录制出一首歌，这之后再投入100万，却可以生产出100万张唱片。此时，如果其它厂商随意进入复制，会将该产品定价于其边际成本，而该价格是不足以收回前期投资的，当然，创作者也就没有创新的积极性了。
因此，需要授予创作者以某种形式的垄断权利。正是沿着这一思路，1970年代后期，约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨和阿维纳什·迪克西特发展出了一个垄断竞争的增长模型。这一目前被广泛运用的模型背后的假设是：经济增长需要技术变革，这就意味着会出现报酬递增，这就属于不完备竞争。
接下来，保罗·罗默则对这一模型进行形式化，提出了内生增长理论，将技术变革纳入增长模型中。罗默理论的核心是“非竞争性”（nonrivalry），他认为，“一件非竞争性物品具有这样一种属性：一家企业或一个人使用它，并不会限制其它企业或人来使用它。”这样的物品内在地具有报酬递增性质，因而，在完全竞争市场中，是不可能激励技术创新的，因而也不能出现经济增长。经济要增长，就需要某种程度的垄断。
经济学家们当然不喜欢垄断棗包括专利、版权等等垄断，但他们希望经济保持增长，于是，他们只好作了这样一笔浮士德式的交易：容忍一定程度的垄断，以实现经济增长。
由来已久的挑战
事实上，专利权、版权等等政府授予创作者以暂时的垄断性权利的做法，一直是经济学家争论的话题。15世纪的威尼斯政府最早引入了专利权和版权制度，试图使创新者在一定时期获得专有的权利，以激励他们进行创新。美国宪法甚至专门赋予国会以“旨在为推进科学与实用技艺之进步而确保作者和发明者对其作品和发现之专有权”的权力。
不少经济学家认为，这种独占权使创作者可以限定价格和产量，从而不能最有益于社会。而在现代奥地利学派传统中，一直有学者怀疑甚至反对政府实施的种种保护知识产权的制度。
米塞斯曾经指出：“专利制和版权制是最近几百年法律演进的结果。它们在财产权传统的体系中的地位，还在争论中。人们对它们侧目而视，认为它们是不正当的。它们被视为特权，是当年仅靠政府当局授予作家和发明家的特权而得到法律保障的一个遗迹。它们的作用是可疑的，因为它们只有在使独占价格下的出卖成为可能时才是有利的。而且，专利法的是否公平，基于下列理由也发生争论：专利法只是奖赏那些在最后阶段完成某些发明而使这些发明进入实际用途的人们。这些发明是逐渐接近成功的，以前还有些人对于这些发明的贡献比享有专利权的这个后继者要大得多，但是他们没有享受到专利权的利益。”（米塞斯著，夏道平译，《人的行为》，台湾银行，1976年，第675页）米塞斯尽管没有明确地对专利权予以否定，但他将其归入“特权”之列。
同样，早在1947年，哈耶克就曾提出：把财产权概念扩展到诸如发明专利权、版权和商标权这样的领域，可能会威胁自由竞争的市场秩序：“我确定无疑地相信：第一，在这些领域中，盲目地套用那种针对有形物上而发展起来的财产权概念，已然在很大程度上助长了垄断的发展；因此第二，如果我们想使竞争在这些领域中发挥作用，那么我们就必须进行彻底的改革，尤其在工业专利权领域中，我们还必须对这样一个问题进行认真的探究：授予垄断专有权的做法，对于科研投资所具有的那种风险来说，是否真的最恰当和最有效的奖励方式？”在哈耶克看来，将财产权的概念扩展到知识产权领域，从而对于知识产权给予近乎绝对的保护，“大大促成了一种有害且不可欲之特权的确立”（哈耶克著，邓正来译，《个人主义与自由秩序》，三联书店，2003年，第167页）。
终其一生，哈耶克都将这种视为政府制造的一种垄断。在晚年的《法律、立法与自由》中，哈耶克将工业专利与关税及政府在运输、公用事业等等领域中的垄断并列，都属于政府“蓄意支持垄断或者把垄断当作一种政策工具加以使用”，他反问：“如果政府不曾支持各种垄断，那么垄断是否还有可能成为一个严重的问题？”（邓正来译，中国大百科全书出版社，2000年，下册，第398页）。
另一位早年深受米塞斯影响的学者弗里茨·马赫鲁普曾指出：“没有必要用专利保护来激励竞争性市场中的企业投资于产品和加工方式的开发。一家公司从开发新产品、并第一个将其投入市场中所获得的短期收益，就能提供足够的激励。”
穆雷·罗斯巴德也曾在其巨著《人、经济与国家》中指出：“专利权能够鼓励研究开支的绝对增长，这并不是不证自明的。相反，可以肯定，专利权将扰乱研究开支分布的格局。因为，很显然，第一位发现者可以从特权中获利，同样显然的是，竞争者在多年内不得进入该生产领域……而且，专利持有人本人也没有在该领域深入研究的激励了，因为特权就能使他坐享其成。”
当然，这些奥地利学派经济学家绝不反对发明创造者和作者获得其创新活动的报酬，他们只是反对政府介入棗或过多地介入，因为他们属于自由至上主义（libertariansim），在经济理论上，他们坚定地相信自由市场的力量。他们重视的是作为一个过程的市场，而不是静态的市场结构。而政府授予的、并由政府强制执行的知识产权，会制造出一种扰乱市场过程的垄断。而只要是垄断，就具有垄断的一切危害，不管所垄断的是什么东西。他们提出并且论证，自由市场本身能够自发地发展出某种保护和奖励机制，给予发明创造者以必要的回报。
不过，由于奥地利学派本身长期处于边缘状态，而且，他们的理论没有模型化，缺乏与主流学界对话的基础，所以，他们的论点并没有引起广泛的关注。
再一次发起挑战
博德林和莱文则接着讲述这个故事。
他们首先争辩说，历史上，无数创新发明，都是在没有知识产权保护的情况下涌现的。莫扎特谱写出了无数优美的乐曲，而当时并没有政府保护他的版权。当代的例子也不胜枚举。最典型的是流行时尚领域。每个时装设计师都在不断推陈出新，他们也不在意别人模仿甚至仿制，他们仍然在创新，并且，也获得了不菲的利润。同样，在证券市场上，每种金融产品都会被其它企业迅速模仿，但这并没有打消企业创新的积极性。贝佐斯专心经营亚马逊，并没有找别的购物网站索要网上购物模式专利费。
甚至在软件行业也是如此。他们引用麻省理工学院两位经济学家的论文指出，“当今最具有创新性的产业棗软件、计算机和半导体行业棗历史上的专利保护是相当弱的，产品总是被人迅速模仿”。反而是80年代联邦法院加强保护软件专利权的裁决，使软件更缺乏创意了，因为获得了垄断权的软件企业只需要开发升级产品就可以获取丰厚利润。我们得到的不再是全新的软件，而只是某个软件的第几个版本而已。
这两位经济学家从理论上对这种现象作出了解释。他们着重反驳了知识创新的非竞争性观点。上述罗默等人提出的支持授予专利、版权保护的经济学基础是所谓的“非竞争性”概念，而这两位经济学家则争辩说，纯粹的观念、思想的使用，确实是非竞争性，但观念的有形体现物之使用，却不是非竞争性的。而经济学只应关心这些体现观念的东西。比如，一个软件程序可能没有价值，但其它人要使用用该程序，就必须进行复制，这就需要耗费一定资源，这时候，它就是稀缺的。一张包含该程序的光盘，你在使用的时候，别人就无法使用。
当然，开发该程序花费的成本远远高于复制该程序到一张光盘上。但即使是复制，也不是免费的，只是生产成本低得多而已。这里涉及到两个不同的生产过程：开发生产原型的第一个过程漫长而艰苦，而复制的过程则相对容易得多。而罗默却没有作出这样的区分，只是笼统地说知识产品是非竞争性的。其实，只有原型中所蕴涵的观念是非竞争性的，而作为大规模生产过程的复制，并无所谓报酬递增现象，依然遵循一般的市场规律。
上述问题只是枝节问题，核心的问题仍然在于：创新者是否有足够的激励愿意进行这种费劲而成本高昂的创新过程。如果一件东西刚被创造出来，别人就可以随意仿制，创新者如何获利？
没有几个经济学家喜欢作为一种垄断的版权和专利权，如果你反对这些垄断权，那就需要证明，自由市场如何能够确保创新者获得足够的激励？博德林和莱文设计出了自己的解决方案，即创新者将被赋予“首次销售权（right of first sale）”。在出售他的知识产品的原型的时候，一次性获得该产品未来全部的市场价值。比如，假如某歌星录制了一首新歌，就可以将母带出售给音乐发行商，价格则等于在未来若干年内她的歌迷们愿意支付的总报酬。
也就是说，按照两位作者的设想，创作者的全部收入将来自最初出售的若干件产品，因为仿效者们也必须买到某一产品的原型才能模仿制造。因而，创作者可以以非常高的价格出售它。此时，这些产品不是消费品，而相当于资本品。
争论刚刚开始
本文一经发表，在学术界即引起广泛争议，并引动当代几位顶级研究增长问题的经济学家现身江湖。索罗认为，这篇论文“给人很多启发”，但需要进一步细化。芝加哥大学的诺贝尔奖获得者卢卡斯则说，他们的理论可能没有问题，但得分清楚适用的范围。伦敦经济学院的一位经济学家则说，这篇论文很重要，颠覆了半个世纪来经济学有关知识产权的形式化思考，他正在对他们的模型进行细化。
但也有学者认为，所谓的“首次销售权”方案面临很多难题，它根本就是“不现实的”。罗默则直言不讳：他们的逻辑是有缺陷的，他们的假设是不可靠的。笔者也认为，给首次销售权定价面临着无法克服的知识问题。
不过，不管怎么样，这两位经济学家又重新提出了一个长期纠缠经济学家的问题：授予垄断专有权的做法，对于科研投资所具有的那种风险来说，是否真的最恰当和最有效的奖励方式？或者换句话说，这些学者提出的问题是：是不是必须在经济增长与垄断之间作交易？即使政府不出场，依靠自由市场本身自行运转，能否发育出促进个人和企业生产观念和知识、进行技术创新的激励机制？
许多经济学家给出了肯定的回答。经济学家们已经设想出了种种方案，而企业界也一直在尝试各种毋须政府介入而自愿解决问题的方案，比如，由行业组织（而不是国家）制订产品标准，组织认证；企业通过私法保护其商业机密，通过自愿的授权安排来保证自己的秘密不被其它企业模仿，产品本身以极低价出售甚至免费赠送但通过后续的支持性服务获取利润，等等。这些制度安排可以使创新企业获得足以收回其投资的收益，又能避免政府制造的垄断可能带来的种种弊端。
不过，大多数经济学家棗包括信奉自由市场原则的经济学家棗对于所有这些方案的可行性仍然表示怀疑。各国政府也没有改变现有知识产权保护体系的政治意愿，相反，通过种种国际条约安排，它正在变成一种国际性法律制度。而且，经由这些条约的强化，知识产权保护似乎已经成为一个意识形态“禁忌”：你不支持知识产权保护，就会被视为经济学中的异类。
但是，对于经济学家来说，问题并不因为现实的变化而有所改变：知识产权果真是一种对于经济增长来说必不可少的、因而是可以接受的垄断吗？显然，争论还将继续下去。
本文主要参考明尼阿波利斯联邦储备银行出版之The Region杂志2002年9月号上的文章Douglas Clement，“Was Napster Right?”（http://minneapolisfed.org/pubs/region/02-09/napster.cfm）；该文略有修改又发表于Reason杂志2003年第3期，题为“Creation Myths：Does innovation require intellectual property rights?”（ http://www.reason.com/0303/fe.dc.creation.shtml）。
《经济导刊》，2003年第八期
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February 24, 2009 by Stephan Kinsella
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In this comment on a post here, I was accused of hiding or avoiding mention of one of Mises’s comments about copyrights and patents. I suppose the commentor was unaware of my extensive quotes of Mises in this comment on another thread, which quoted a large deal of Mises’s remarks on IP, including the one in question. So much for suppression. Since this extensive comment is buried on a thread, I reprint it below as a standalone post.As I noted in Against Intellectual Property (n. 38), “Mises expressed no opinion on the issue, merely drawing the economic implications from the presence or absence of such laws.”
Here are Mises’s words:
The External Economies of Intellectual Creation
The extreme case of external economies is shown in the “production” of the intellectual groundwork of every kind of processing and constructing. The characteristic mark of formulas, i.e., the mental devices directing the technological procedures, is the inexhaustibility of the services they render. These services are consequently not scarce, and there is no need to economize their employment. Those considerations that resulted in the establishment of the institution of private ownership of economic goods did not refer to them. They remained outside the sphere of private property not because they are immaterial, intangible, and impalpable, but because their serviceableness cannot be exhausted.
People began to realize only later that this state of affairs has its drawbacks too. It places the producers of such formulas–especially the inventors of technological procedures and authors and composers–in a peculiar position. They are burdened with the cost of production, while the services of the product they have created can be gratuitously enjoyed by everybody. What they produce is for them entirely or almost entirely external economies.
If there are neither copyrights nor patents, the inventors and authors are in the position of an entrepreneur. They have a temporary advantage as against other people. As they start sooner in utilizing their invention or their manuscript themselves or in making it available for use to other people (manufacturers or publishers), they have the chance to earn profits in the time interval until everybody can likewise utilize it. As soon as the invention or the content of the book are publicly known, they become “free goods” and the inventor or author has only his glory.
The problem involved has nothing to do with the activities of the creative genius. These pioneers and originators of things unheard of do not produce and work in the sense in which these terms are employed in dealing with the affairs of other people. They do not let themselves be influenced by the response their work meets on the part of their contemporaries. They do not wait for encouragement.[13]
It is different with the broad class of professional intellectuals whose services society cannot do without. We may disregard the problem of second-rate authors of poems, fiction, and plays and second-rate composers and need not inquire whether it would be a serious disadvantage for mankind to lack the products of their efforts. But it is obvious that handing down knowledge to the rising generation and [p. 662] familiarizing the acting individuals with the amount of knowledge they need for the realization of their plans require textbooks, manuals, handbooks, and other nonfiction works. It is unlikely that people would undertake the laborious task of writing such publications if everyone were free to reproduce them. This is still more manifest in the field of technological invention and discovery. The extensive experimentation necessary for such achievements is often very expensive. It is very probable that technological progress would be seriously retarded if, for the inventor and for those who defray the expenses incurred by his experimentation, the results obtained were nothing but external economies.
Patents and copyrights are results of the legal evolution of the last centuries. Their place in the traditional body of property rights is still controversial. People look askance at them and deem them irregular. They are considered privileges, a vestige of the rudimentary period of their evolution when legal protection was accorded to authors and investors only by virtue of an exceptional privilege granted by the authorities. They are suspect, as they are lucrative only if they make it possible to sell at monopoly prices. [14]. Moreover, the fairness of patent laws is contested on the ground that they reward only those who put the finishing touch leading to practical utilization of achievements of many predecessors. these precursors go empty-handed although their main contribution to the final result was often much more weighty than that of the patentee.
It is beyond the scope of catallactics to enter into an examination of the arguments brought forward for and against the institution of copyrights and patents. It has merely to stress the point that this is a problem of delimitation of property rights and that with the abolition of patents and copyrights authors and inventors would for the most part be producers of external economies.
and here:
The Creative Genius
Far above the millions that come and pass away tower the pioneers, the men whose deeds and ideas cut out new paths for mankind. For the pioneering genius [12] to create is the essence of life. To live means for him to create.
The activities of these prodigious men cannot be fully subsumed under the praxeological concept of labor. They are not labor because they are for the genius not means, but ends in themselves. He lives in creating and inventing. For him there is not leisure, only intermissions of temporary sterility and frustration. His incentive is not the desire to bring about a result, but the act of producing it. The accomplishment gratifies him neither mediately nor immediately. It does not gratify him mediately because his fellow men at best are unconcerned about it, more often even greet it with taunts, sneers, and persecution. Many a genius could have used his gifts to render his life agreeable and joyful; he did not even consider such a possibility and chose the thorny path without hesitation. The genius wants to accomplish what he considers his mission, even if he knows that he moves toward his own disaster.
Neither does the genius derive immediate gratification from his creative activities. Creating is for him agony and torment, a ceaseless excruciating struggle against internal and external obstacles; it consumes and crushes him. The Austrian poet Grillparzer has depicted this in a touching poem “Farewell to Gastein.” [13] We may assume that in writing it he thought not only of his own sorrows and tribulations but also of the greater sufferings of a much greater man, of Beethoven, whose fate resembled his own and whom he understood, through devoted affection and sympathetic appreciation, better than any other of his contemporaries. Nietzsche compared himself to the flame that insatiably consumes and destroys itself.[14] Such agonies are phenomena which have nothing in common with the connotations generally attached to the notions of work and labor, production and success, breadwinning and enjoyment of life.
The achievements of the creative innovator, his thoughts and theories, his poems, paintings, and compositions, cannot be classified praxeologically as products of labor. They are not the outcome of [p. 140] the employment of labor which could have been devoted to the production of other amenities for the “production” of a masterpiece of philosophy, art, or literature. Thinkers, poets, and artists are sometimes unfit to accomplish any other work. At any rate, the time and toil which they devote to creative activities are not withheld from employment for other purposes. Conditions may sometimes doom to sterility a man who would have had the power to bring forth things unheard of; they may leave him no alternative other than to die from starvation or to use all his forces in the struggle for mere physical survival. But if the genius succeeds in achieving his goals, nobody but himself pays the “costs” incurred. Goethe was perhaps in some respects hampered by his functions at the court of Weimar. But certainly he would not have accomplished more in his official duties as minister of state, theater manager, and administrator of mines if he had not written his plays, poems, and novels.
and here:
The special conditions and circumstances required for the emergence of monopoly prices and their catallactic features are:
…
11. The monopolized good by whose partial withholding from the market the monopoly prices are made to prevail can be either a good of the lowest order or a good of a higher order, a factor of production. It may consist in the control of the technological knowledge required for production, the “recipe.” Such recipes are as a rule free goods as their ability to produce definite effects is unlimited. They can become economic goods only if they are monopolized and their use is restricted. Any price paid for the services rendered by a recipe is always a monopoly price. It is immaterial whether the restriction of a recipe’s use is made possible by institutional conditions–such as patents and copyright laws–or by the fact that a formula is kept secret and other people fail to guess it.
The complementary factor of production the monopolization of which can result in the establishment of monopoly prices may also consist in a man’s opportunity to make his cooperation in the production of a good known to consumers who attribute to this cooperation a special significance. This opportunity may be given either by the nature of the commodities or services in question or by institutional provisions such as protection of trademarks. The reasons why the consumers value the contribution of a man or a firm so highly are manifold. They may be: special confidence placed on the individual or firm concerned on account of previous experience[15]; merely baseless prejudice or error; snobbishness; magic or metaphysical prepossessions whose groundlessness is ridiculed by more reasonable people. A drug marked by a trademark may not differ in its chemical structure and its physiological efficacy from other compounds not marked with the same label. However, if the buyers attach a special significance to this label and are ready to pay higher prices for the [p. 365] product marked with it, the seller can, provided the configuration of demand is propitious, reap monopoly prices.
The monopoly which enables the monopolist to restrict the amount offered without counteraction on the part of other people can consist in the greater productivity of a factor which he has at his disposal as against the lower productivity of the corresponding factor at the disposal of his potential competitors. If the margin between the higher productivity of his supply of the monopolized factor and that of his potential competitors is broad enough for the emergence of a monopoly price, a situation results which we may call margin monopoly[16].
…
In the long run such a national cartel cannot preserve its monopolistic position if entrance into its branch of production is free to newcomers. The monopolized factor the services of which the cartel restricts (as far as the domestic market is concerned) for the sake of monopoly prices is a geographical condition which can easily be duplicated by every new investor who establishes a new plant within the borders of Atlantis. Under modern industrial conditions, the characteristic feature of which is steady technological progress, the latest plant will as a rule be more efficient than the older plants and produce at lower average costs. The incentive to prospective newcomers is therefore twofold. It consists not only in the monopoly gain of the cartel members, but also in the possibility of outstripping them by lower costs of production.
Here again institutions come to the aid of the old firms that form the cartel. The patents give them a legal monopoly which nobody may infringe. Of course, only some of their production processes may be protected by patents. But a competitor who is prevented from resorting to these processes and to the production of the articles concerned may be handicapped in such a serious way that he cannot consider entrance into the field of the cartelized industry.
The owner of a patent enjoys a legal monopoly which, other conditions being propitious, can be used for the attainment of monopoly prices. Beyond the field covered by the patent itself a patent may render auxiliary services in the establishment and preservation of margin monopoly where the primary institutional conditions for the emergence of such a monopoly prevail.
and here:
Another popular fallacy refers to the alleged suppression of useful patents. A patent is a legal monopoly granted for a limited number of years to the inventor of a new contrivance. At this point we are not concerned with the question whether or not it is a good policy to grant such exclusive privileges to inventors.[14] We have to deal only with the assertion that “big business” misuses the patent system to withhold from the public benefits it could derive from technological improvement.
In granting a patent to an inventor the authorities do not investigate the invention’s economic significance. They are concerned merely with the priority of the idea and limit their examination to technological problems. They deal with the same impartial scrupulousness with an invention which revolutionizes a whole industry and with some trifling gadget, the uselessness of which is obvious. Thus patent protection is provided to a vast number of quite worthless inventions. Their authors are ready to overrate the importance of their contribution to the progress of technological knowledge and build exaggerated hopes upon the material gain it could bring them. Disappointed, they grumble about the absurdity of an economic system that deprives the people of the benefit of technological progress.
and here:
The convincing power of the productivity argument is in fact so irresistible that the advocates of socialism were forced to abandon their old tactics and to resort to new methods. They are eager to divert attention from the productivity issue by throwing into relief the monopoly problem. All contemporary socialist manifestoes expatiate on monopoly power. Statesmen and professors try to outdo one another in depicting the evils of monopoly. Our age is called the age of monopoly capitalism. The foremost argument advanced today in favor of socialism is the reference to monopoly.
Now, it is true that the emergence of monopoly prices (not of monopoly as such without monopoly prices) creates a discrepancy between the interests of the monopolist and those of the consumers. The monopolist does not employ the monopolized good according to the wishes of the consumers. As far as there are monopoly prices, the interests of the monopolists take precedence over those of the public and the democracy of the market is restricted. with regard to monopoly prices there is not harmony, but conflict of interests.
It is possible to contest these statements with regard to the monopoly prices received in the sale of articles under patents and copyrights. One may argue that in the absence of patent and copyright legislation these books, compositions, and technological innovations would never have come into existence. The public pays monopoly prices for things it would not have enjoyed at all under competitive prices. However, we may fairly disregard this issue. It has little to do with the great monopoly controversy of our day. When people deal with the evils of monopoly, they imply that there prevails within the unhampered [p. 681] market economy a general and inevitable tendency toward the substitution of monopoly prices for competitive prices. This is, they say, a characteristic mark of “mature” or “late” capitalism. Whatever conditions may have been in the earlier stages of capitalist evolution and whatever one may think about the validity of the classical economists’ statements concerning the harmony of the rightly understood interests, today there is no longer any question of such a harmony.
这些都是最有趣的问题，同时也是国内商业和国际贸易领域中引发大量争端的问题。相应地，在学术界，包括专利权及版权、商标权等在内的知识产权问题，也引起了广泛的争议，并且涉及到经济学的一些基本问题：保护知识产权是否在人为制造垄断？保护知识产权是否必然会促进知识和技术创新，从而推动经济增长？对于经济增长来说，知识产权保护是否是必不可少的？目前各国的对于知识产权的保护，是否已经太过分了？拒绝政府的保护，由市场机制自发运转，能否起到同样的鼓励创新的结果？
坦率地说，国内围绕这个问题的争论棗比如当年有关是否应当保护微软知识产权的辩论棗中，充满了强烈的道德激情。笔者对此没有专门研究，也没有确定的立场。本文只是简单介绍一段学术公案，或许有助于读者从更纯粹的知识和思想角度了解这场旷日持久的争论的确切含义。
经济学家与魔鬼的交易
明尼阿波利斯联邦储备银行去年3月发表了本行顾问、明尼苏达大学经济学教授米歇尔·博德林与加州大学洛杉矶分校艾智仁经济学理论讲座教授戴维·莱文的一篇报告《完全竞争性的创新》（Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine，Perfectly Competitive Innovation，http://minneapolisfed.org/research/sr/sr303.html），他们建构了一个报酬保持恒定条件下创新与经济增长的竞争性模型。他们的观点引起了广泛的注意，因为他们的观点有点惊世骇俗：版权、专利权等等政府授予的权利不仅强化了垄断，还会造成附带损害，即获专利保护的产品高价低质，妨碍未来的创新。而充分竞争的市场完全能够奖励（从而激励）创新活动，因而版权和专利权完全是多余的。
这样的看法完全跟经济学主流的经济增长理论唱了反调。50年代，罗伯特·索罗通过研究证明了，技术变革是经济增长的主要动力，但他的模型将技术变革视为一个给定变量，是由纯粹经济力量之外的因素决定的。60年代，肯尼斯·阿罗等人分析了市场与技术变革之间的关系，他们得出结论：自由市场不能带来最优水平的创新。阿罗给出了三个理由，来说明为什么完备竞争不能在创新活动实现资源的最优配置：“我们之所以断言，自由企业经济在发明创造与研究上投资不足（与理想状态相比），是因为这样的投资是有风险的，是因为其产品只能在很有限的程度上做到相称得到正确的评价，也因为使用中会出现报酬递增。”
风险问题是显而易见的，毋须多说。第二个问题是不对等性（inappropriability），也即一项发明创造者从该创造中得到的收益与社会从中得到的收益不相称。比如，我发明了轮子，只能挣到1000元，而全人类却能从中得到无穷好处，那我会不会去尝试发明它？很可能不会。当然，用界定清晰的财产权法律可以解决这一问题。
最重大的难题是不可分割性。也就是说，一项发明创造，你先得前期花费大量开销（时间或金钱），才能有一首歌、一个方程式或一本书。而在此之后，复制起来却只要一点点成本，这样就会出现报酬递增现象。比如，最初你投入100万才录制出一首歌，这之后再投入100万，却可以生产出100万张唱片。此时，如果其它厂商随意进入复制，会将该产品定价于其边际成本，而该价格是不足以收回前期投资的，当然，创作者也就没有创新的积极性了。
因此，需要授予创作者以某种形式的垄断权利。正是沿着这一思路，1970年代后期，约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨和阿维纳什·迪克西特发展出了一个垄断竞争的增长模型。这一目前被广泛运用的模型背后的假设是：经济增长需要技术变革，这就意味着会出现报酬递增，这就属于不完备竞争。
接下来，保罗·罗默则对这一模型进行形式化，提出了内生增长理论，将技术变革纳入增长模型中。罗默理论的核心是“非竞争性”（nonrivalry），他认为，“一件非竞争性物品具有这样一种属性：一家企业或一个人使用它，并不会限制其它企业或人来使用它。”这样的物品内在地具有报酬递增性质，因而，在完全竞争市场中，是不可能激励技术创新的，因而也不能出现经济增长。经济要增长，就需要某种程度的垄断。
经济学家们当然不喜欢垄断棗包括专利、版权等等垄断，但他们希望经济保持增长，于是，他们只好作了这样一笔浮士德式的交易：容忍一定程度的垄断，以实现经济增长。
由来已久的挑战
事实上，专利权、版权等等政府授予创作者以暂时的垄断性权利的做法，一直是经济学家争论的话题。15世纪的威尼斯政府最早引入了专利权和版权制度，试图使创新者在一定时期获得专有的权利，以激励他们进行创新。美国宪法甚至专门赋予国会以“旨在为推进科学与实用技艺之进步而确保作者和发明者对其作品和发现之专有权”的权力。
不少经济学家认为，这种独占权使创作者可以限定价格和产量，从而不能最有益于社会。而在现代奥地利学派传统中，一直有学者怀疑甚至反对政府实施的种种保护知识产权的制度。
米塞斯曾经指出：“专利制和版权制是最近几百年法律演进的结果。它们在财产权传统的体系中的地位，还在争论中。人们对它们侧目而视，认为它们是不正当的。它们被视为特权，是当年仅靠政府当局授予作家和发明家的特权而得到法律保障的一个遗迹。它们的作用是可疑的，因为它们只有在使独占价格下的出卖成为可能时才是有利的。而且，专利法的是否公平，基于下列理由也发生争论：专利法只是奖赏那些在最后阶段完成某些发明而使这些发明进入实际用途的人们。这些发明是逐渐接近成功的，以前还有些人对于这些发明的贡献比享有专利权的这个后继者要大得多，但是他们没有享受到专利权的利益。”（米塞斯著，夏道平译，《人的行为》，台湾银行，1976年，第675页）米塞斯尽管没有明确地对专利权予以否定，但他将其归入“特权”之列。
同样，早在1947年，哈耶克就曾提出：把财产权概念扩展到诸如发明专利权、版权和商标权这样的领域，可能会威胁自由竞争的市场秩序：“我确定无疑地相信：第一，在这些领域中，盲目地套用那种针对有形物上而发展起来的财产权概念，已然在很大程度上助长了垄断的发展；因此第二，如果我们想使竞争在这些领域中发挥作用，那么我们就必须进行彻底的改革，尤其在工业专利权领域中，我们还必须对这样一个问题进行认真的探究：授予垄断专有权的做法，对于科研投资所具有的那种风险来说，是否真的最恰当和最有效的奖励方式？”在哈耶克看来，将财产权的概念扩展到知识产权领域，从而对于知识产权给予近乎绝对的保护，“大大促成了一种有害且不可欲之特权的确立”（哈耶克著，邓正来译，《个人主义与自由秩序》，三联书店，2003年，第167页）。
终其一生，哈耶克都将这种视为政府制造的一种垄断。在晚年的《法律、立法与自由》中，哈耶克将工业专利与关税及政府在运输、公用事业等等领域中的垄断并列，都属于政府“蓄意支持垄断或者把垄断当作一种政策工具加以使用”，他反问：“如果政府不曾支持各种垄断，那么垄断是否还有可能成为一个严重的问题？”（邓正来译，中国大百科全书出版社，2000年，下册，第398页）。
另一位早年深受米塞斯影响的学者弗里茨·马赫鲁普曾指出：“没有必要用专利保护来激励竞争性市场中的企业投资于产品和加工方式的开发。一家公司从开发新产品、并第一个将其投入市场中所获得的短期收益，就能提供足够的激励。”
穆雷·罗斯巴德也曾在其巨著《人、经济与国家》中指出：“专利权能够鼓励研究开支的绝对增长，这并不是不证自明的。相反，可以肯定，专利权将扰乱研究开支分布的格局。因为，很显然，第一位发现者可以从特权中获利，同样显然的是，竞争者在多年内不得进入该生产领域……而且，专利持有人本人也没有在该领域深入研究的激励了，因为特权就能使他坐享其成。”
当然，这些奥地利学派经济学家绝不反对发明创造者和作者获得其创新活动的报酬，他们只是反对政府介入棗或过多地介入，因为他们属于自由至上主义（libertariansim），在经济理论上，他们坚定地相信自由市场的力量。他们重视的是作为一个过程的市场，而不是静态的市场结构。而政府授予的、并由政府强制执行的知识产权，会制造出一种扰乱市场过程的垄断。而只要是垄断，就具有垄断的一切危害，不管所垄断的是什么东西。他们提出并且论证，自由市场本身能够自发地发展出某种保护和奖励机制，给予发明创造者以必要的回报。
不过，由于奥地利学派本身长期处于边缘状态，而且，他们的理论没有模型化，缺乏与主流学界对话的基础，所以，他们的论点并没有引起广泛的关注。
再一次发起挑战
博德林和莱文则接着讲述这个故事。
他们首先争辩说，历史上，无数创新发明，都是在没有知识产权保护的情况下涌现的。莫扎特谱写出了无数优美的乐曲，而当时并没有政府保护他的版权。当代的例子也不胜枚举。最典型的是流行时尚领域。每个时装设计师都在不断推陈出新，他们也不在意别人模仿甚至仿制，他们仍然在创新，并且，也获得了不菲的利润。同样，在证券市场上，每种金融产品都会被其它企业迅速模仿，但这并没有打消企业创新的积极性。贝佐斯专心经营亚马逊，并没有找别的购物网站索要网上购物模式专利费。
甚至在软件行业也是如此。他们引用麻省理工学院两位经济学家的论文指出，“当今最具有创新性的产业棗软件、计算机和半导体行业棗历史上的专利保护是相当弱的，产品总是被人迅速模仿”。反而是80年代联邦法院加强保护软件专利权的裁决，使软件更缺乏创意了，因为获得了垄断权的软件企业只需要开发升级产品就可以获取丰厚利润。我们得到的不再是全新的软件，而只是某个软件的第几个版本而已。
这两位经济学家从理论上对这种现象作出了解释。他们着重反驳了知识创新的非竞争性观点。上述罗默等人提出的支持授予专利、版权保护的经济学基础是所谓的“非竞争性”概念，而这两位经济学家则争辩说，纯粹的观念、思想的使用，确实是非竞争性，但观念的有形体现物之使用，却不是非竞争性的。而经济学只应关心这些体现观念的东西。比如，一个软件程序可能没有价值，但其它人要使用用该程序，就必须进行复制，这就需要耗费一定资源，这时候，它就是稀缺的。一张包含该程序的光盘，你在使用的时候，别人就无法使用。
当然，开发该程序花费的成本远远高于复制该程序到一张光盘上。但即使是复制，也不是免费的，只是生产成本低得多而已。这里涉及到两个不同的生产过程：开发生产原型的第一个过程漫长而艰苦，而复制的过程则相对容易得多。而罗默却没有作出这样的区分，只是笼统地说知识产品是非竞争性的。其实，只有原型中所蕴涵的观念是非竞争性的，而作为大规模生产过程的复制，并无所谓报酬递增现象，依然遵循一般的市场规律。
上述问题只是枝节问题，核心的问题仍然在于：创新者是否有足够的激励愿意进行这种费劲而成本高昂的创新过程。如果一件东西刚被创造出来，别人就可以随意仿制，创新者如何获利？
没有几个经济学家喜欢作为一种垄断的版权和专利权，如果你反对这些垄断权，那就需要证明，自由市场如何能够确保创新者获得足够的激励？博德林和莱文设计出了自己的解决方案，即创新者将被赋予“首次销售权（right of first sale）”。在出售他的知识产品的原型的时候，一次性获得该产品未来全部的市场价值。比如，假如某歌星录制了一首新歌，就可以将母带出售给音乐发行商，价格则等于在未来若干年内她的歌迷们愿意支付的总报酬。
也就是说，按照两位作者的设想，创作者的全部收入将来自最初出售的若干件产品，因为仿效者们也必须买到某一产品的原型才能模仿制造。因而，创作者可以以非常高的价格出售它。此时，这些产品不是消费品，而相当于资本品。
争论刚刚开始
本文一经发表，在学术界即引起广泛争议，并引动当代几位顶级研究增长问题的经济学家现身江湖。索罗认为，这篇论文“给人很多启发”，但需要进一步细化。芝加哥大学的诺贝尔奖获得者卢卡斯则说，他们的理论可能没有问题，但得分清楚适用的范围。伦敦经济学院的一位经济学家则说，这篇论文很重要，颠覆了半个世纪来经济学有关知识产权的形式化思考，他正在对他们的模型进行细化。
但也有学者认为，所谓的“首次销售权”方案面临很多难题，它根本就是“不现实的”。罗默则直言不讳：他们的逻辑是有缺陷的，他们的假设是不可靠的。笔者也认为，给首次销售权定价面临着无法克服的知识问题。
不过，不管怎么样，这两位经济学家又重新提出了一个长期纠缠经济学家的问题：授予垄断专有权的做法，对于科研投资所具有的那种风险来说，是否真的最恰当和最有效的奖励方式？或者换句话说，这些学者提出的问题是：是不是必须在经济增长与垄断之间作交易？即使政府不出场，依靠自由市场本身自行运转，能否发育出促进个人和企业生产观念和知识、进行技术创新的激励机制？
许多经济学家给出了肯定的回答。经济学家们已经设想出了种种方案，而企业界也一直在尝试各种毋须政府介入而自愿解决问题的方案，比如，由行业组织（而不是国家）制订产品标准，组织认证；企业通过私法保护其商业机密，通过自愿的授权安排来保证自己的秘密不被其它企业模仿，产品本身以极低价出售甚至免费赠送但通过后续的支持性服务获取利润，等等。这些制度安排可以使创新企业获得足以收回其投资的收益，又能避免政府制造的垄断可能带来的种种弊端。
不过，大多数经济学家棗包括信奉自由市场原则的经济学家棗对于所有这些方案的可行性仍然表示怀疑。各国政府也没有改变现有知识产权保护体系的政治意愿，相反，通过种种国际条约安排，它正在变成一种国际性法律制度。而且，经由这些条约的强化，知识产权保护似乎已经成为一个意识形态“禁忌”：你不支持知识产权保护，就会被视为经济学中的异类。
但是，对于经济学家来说，问题并不因为现实的变化而有所改变：知识产权果真是一种对于经济增长来说必不可少的、因而是可以接受的垄断吗？显然，争论还将继续下去。
本文主要参考明尼阿波利斯联邦储备银行出版之The Region杂志2002年9月号上的文章Douglas Clement，“Was Napster Right?”（http://minneapolisfed.org/pubs/region/02-09/napster.cfm）；该文略有修改又发表于Reason杂志2003年第3期，题为“Creation Myths：Does innovation require intellectual property rights?”（ http://www.reason.com/0303/fe.dc.creation.shtml）。
《经济导刊》，2003年第八期
推荐 2人 感谢
2011-03-31 23:03:28: 李二公子@心空万物，因果由然 (在七月我总能突然回到荒凉)
Mises on Intellectual PropertyFebruary 24, 2009 by Stephan Kinsella
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In this comment on a post here, I was accused of hiding or avoiding mention of one of Mises’s comments about copyrights and patents. I suppose the commentor was unaware of my extensive quotes of Mises in this comment on another thread, which quoted a large deal of Mises’s remarks on IP, including the one in question. So much for suppression. Since this extensive comment is buried on a thread, I reprint it below as a standalone post.As I noted in Against Intellectual Property (n. 38), “Mises expressed no opinion on the issue, merely drawing the economic implications from the presence or absence of such laws.”
Here are Mises’s words:
The External Economies of Intellectual Creation
The extreme case of external economies is shown in the “production” of the intellectual groundwork of every kind of processing and constructing. The characteristic mark of formulas, i.e., the mental devices directing the technological procedures, is the inexhaustibility of the services they render. These services are consequently not scarce, and there is no need to economize their employment. Those considerations that resulted in the establishment of the institution of private ownership of economic goods did not refer to them. They remained outside the sphere of private property not because they are immaterial, intangible, and impalpable, but because their serviceableness cannot be exhausted.
People began to realize only later that this state of affairs has its drawbacks too. It places the producers of such formulas–especially the inventors of technological procedures and authors and composers–in a peculiar position. They are burdened with the cost of production, while the services of the product they have created can be gratuitously enjoyed by everybody. What they produce is for them entirely or almost entirely external economies.
If there are neither copyrights nor patents, the inventors and authors are in the position of an entrepreneur. They have a temporary advantage as against other people. As they start sooner in utilizing their invention or their manuscript themselves or in making it available for use to other people (manufacturers or publishers), they have the chance to earn profits in the time interval until everybody can likewise utilize it. As soon as the invention or the content of the book are publicly known, they become “free goods” and the inventor or author has only his glory.
The problem involved has nothing to do with the activities of the creative genius. These pioneers and originators of things unheard of do not produce and work in the sense in which these terms are employed in dealing with the affairs of other people. They do not let themselves be influenced by the response their work meets on the part of their contemporaries. They do not wait for encouragement.[13]
It is different with the broad class of professional intellectuals whose services society cannot do without. We may disregard the problem of second-rate authors of poems, fiction, and plays and second-rate composers and need not inquire whether it would be a serious disadvantage for mankind to lack the products of their efforts. But it is obvious that handing down knowledge to the rising generation and [p. 662] familiarizing the acting individuals with the amount of knowledge they need for the realization of their plans require textbooks, manuals, handbooks, and other nonfiction works. It is unlikely that people would undertake the laborious task of writing such publications if everyone were free to reproduce them. This is still more manifest in the field of technological invention and discovery. The extensive experimentation necessary for such achievements is often very expensive. It is very probable that technological progress would be seriously retarded if, for the inventor and for those who defray the expenses incurred by his experimentation, the results obtained were nothing but external economies.
Patents and copyrights are results of the legal evolution of the last centuries. Their place in the traditional body of property rights is still controversial. People look askance at them and deem them irregular. They are considered privileges, a vestige of the rudimentary period of their evolution when legal protection was accorded to authors and investors only by virtue of an exceptional privilege granted by the authorities. They are suspect, as they are lucrative only if they make it possible to sell at monopoly prices. [14]. Moreover, the fairness of patent laws is contested on the ground that they reward only those who put the finishing touch leading to practical utilization of achievements of many predecessors. these precursors go empty-handed although their main contribution to the final result was often much more weighty than that of the patentee.
It is beyond the scope of catallactics to enter into an examination of the arguments brought forward for and against the institution of copyrights and patents. It has merely to stress the point that this is a problem of delimitation of property rights and that with the abolition of patents and copyrights authors and inventors would for the most part be producers of external economies.
and here:
The Creative Genius
Far above the millions that come and pass away tower the pioneers, the men whose deeds and ideas cut out new paths for mankind. For the pioneering genius [12] to create is the essence of life. To live means for him to create.
The activities of these prodigious men cannot be fully subsumed under the praxeological concept of labor. They are not labor because they are for the genius not means, but ends in themselves. He lives in creating and inventing. For him there is not leisure, only intermissions of temporary sterility and frustration. His incentive is not the desire to bring about a result, but the act of producing it. The accomplishment gratifies him neither mediately nor immediately. It does not gratify him mediately because his fellow men at best are unconcerned about it, more often even greet it with taunts, sneers, and persecution. Many a genius could have used his gifts to render his life agreeable and joyful; he did not even consider such a possibility and chose the thorny path without hesitation. The genius wants to accomplish what he considers his mission, even if he knows that he moves toward his own disaster.
Neither does the genius derive immediate gratification from his creative activities. Creating is for him agony and torment, a ceaseless excruciating struggle against internal and external obstacles; it consumes and crushes him. The Austrian poet Grillparzer has depicted this in a touching poem “Farewell to Gastein.” [13] We may assume that in writing it he thought not only of his own sorrows and tribulations but also of the greater sufferings of a much greater man, of Beethoven, whose fate resembled his own and whom he understood, through devoted affection and sympathetic appreciation, better than any other of his contemporaries. Nietzsche compared himself to the flame that insatiably consumes and destroys itself.[14] Such agonies are phenomena which have nothing in common with the connotations generally attached to the notions of work and labor, production and success, breadwinning and enjoyment of life.
The achievements of the creative innovator, his thoughts and theories, his poems, paintings, and compositions, cannot be classified praxeologically as products of labor. They are not the outcome of [p. 140] the employment of labor which could have been devoted to the production of other amenities for the “production” of a masterpiece of philosophy, art, or literature. Thinkers, poets, and artists are sometimes unfit to accomplish any other work. At any rate, the time and toil which they devote to creative activities are not withheld from employment for other purposes. Conditions may sometimes doom to sterility a man who would have had the power to bring forth things unheard of; they may leave him no alternative other than to die from starvation or to use all his forces in the struggle for mere physical survival. But if the genius succeeds in achieving his goals, nobody but himself pays the “costs” incurred. Goethe was perhaps in some respects hampered by his functions at the court of Weimar. But certainly he would not have accomplished more in his official duties as minister of state, theater manager, and administrator of mines if he had not written his plays, poems, and novels.
and here:
The special conditions and circumstances required for the emergence of monopoly prices and their catallactic features are:
…
11. The monopolized good by whose partial withholding from the market the monopoly prices are made to prevail can be either a good of the lowest order or a good of a higher order, a factor of production. It may consist in the control of the technological knowledge required for production, the “recipe.” Such recipes are as a rule free goods as their ability to produce definite effects is unlimited. They can become economic goods only if they are monopolized and their use is restricted. Any price paid for the services rendered by a recipe is always a monopoly price. It is immaterial whether the restriction of a recipe’s use is made possible by institutional conditions–such as patents and copyright laws–or by the fact that a formula is kept secret and other people fail to guess it.
The complementary factor of production the monopolization of which can result in the establishment of monopoly prices may also consist in a man’s opportunity to make his cooperation in the production of a good known to consumers who attribute to this cooperation a special significance. This opportunity may be given either by the nature of the commodities or services in question or by institutional provisions such as protection of trademarks. The reasons why the consumers value the contribution of a man or a firm so highly are manifold. They may be: special confidence placed on the individual or firm concerned on account of previous experience[15]; merely baseless prejudice or error; snobbishness; magic or metaphysical prepossessions whose groundlessness is ridiculed by more reasonable people. A drug marked by a trademark may not differ in its chemical structure and its physiological efficacy from other compounds not marked with the same label. However, if the buyers attach a special significance to this label and are ready to pay higher prices for the [p. 365] product marked with it, the seller can, provided the configuration of demand is propitious, reap monopoly prices.
The monopoly which enables the monopolist to restrict the amount offered without counteraction on the part of other people can consist in the greater productivity of a factor which he has at his disposal as against the lower productivity of the corresponding factor at the disposal of his potential competitors. If the margin between the higher productivity of his supply of the monopolized factor and that of his potential competitors is broad enough for the emergence of a monopoly price, a situation results which we may call margin monopoly[16].
…
In the long run such a national cartel cannot preserve its monopolistic position if entrance into its branch of production is free to newcomers. The monopolized factor the services of which the cartel restricts (as far as the domestic market is concerned) for the sake of monopoly prices is a geographical condition which can easily be duplicated by every new investor who establishes a new plant within the borders of Atlantis. Under modern industrial conditions, the characteristic feature of which is steady technological progress, the latest plant will as a rule be more efficient than the older plants and produce at lower average costs. The incentive to prospective newcomers is therefore twofold. It consists not only in the monopoly gain of the cartel members, but also in the possibility of outstripping them by lower costs of production.
Here again institutions come to the aid of the old firms that form the cartel. The patents give them a legal monopoly which nobody may infringe. Of course, only some of their production processes may be protected by patents. But a competitor who is prevented from resorting to these processes and to the production of the articles concerned may be handicapped in such a serious way that he cannot consider entrance into the field of the cartelized industry.
The owner of a patent enjoys a legal monopoly which, other conditions being propitious, can be used for the attainment of monopoly prices. Beyond the field covered by the patent itself a patent may render auxiliary services in the establishment and preservation of margin monopoly where the primary institutional conditions for the emergence of such a monopoly prevail.
and here:
Another popular fallacy refers to the alleged suppression of useful patents. A patent is a legal monopoly granted for a limited number of years to the inventor of a new contrivance. At this point we are not concerned with the question whether or not it is a good policy to grant such exclusive privileges to inventors.[14] We have to deal only with the assertion that “big business” misuses the patent system to withhold from the public benefits it could derive from technological improvement.
In granting a patent to an inventor the authorities do not investigate the invention’s economic significance. They are concerned merely with the priority of the idea and limit their examination to technological problems. They deal with the same impartial scrupulousness with an invention which revolutionizes a whole industry and with some trifling gadget, the uselessness of which is obvious. Thus patent protection is provided to a vast number of quite worthless inventions. Their authors are ready to overrate the importance of their contribution to the progress of technological knowledge and build exaggerated hopes upon the material gain it could bring them. Disappointed, they grumble about the absurdity of an economic system that deprives the people of the benefit of technological progress.
and here:
The convincing power of the productivity argument is in fact so irresistible that the advocates of socialism were forced to abandon their old tactics and to resort to new methods. They are eager to divert attention from the productivity issue by throwing into relief the monopoly problem. All contemporary socialist manifestoes expatiate on monopoly power. Statesmen and professors try to outdo one another in depicting the evils of monopoly. Our age is called the age of monopoly capitalism. The foremost argument advanced today in favor of socialism is the reference to monopoly.
Now, it is true that the emergence of monopoly prices (not of monopoly as such without monopoly prices) creates a discrepancy between the interests of the monopolist and those of the consumers. The monopolist does not employ the monopolized good according to the wishes of the consumers. As far as there are monopoly prices, the interests of the monopolists take precedence over those of the public and the democracy of the market is restricted. with regard to monopoly prices there is not harmony, but conflict of interests.
It is possible to contest these statements with regard to the monopoly prices received in the sale of articles under patents and copyrights. One may argue that in the absence of patent and copyright legislation these books, compositions, and technological innovations would never have come into existence. The public pays monopoly prices for things it would not have enjoyed at all under competitive prices. However, we may fairly disregard this issue. It has little to do with the great monopoly controversy of our day. When people deal with the evils of monopoly, they imply that there prevails within the unhampered [p. 681] market economy a general and inevitable tendency toward the substitution of monopoly prices for competitive prices. This is, they say, a characteristic mark of “mature” or “late” capitalism. Whatever conditions may have been in the earlier stages of capitalist evolution and whatever one may think about the validity of the classical economists’ statements concerning the harmony of the rightly understood interests, today there is no longer any question of such a harmony.