Re: A. Horns: FeeFiFoII bomardiert uns ins 19. Jahrhundert

["Axel H Horns" <axel.h.horns@gmx.net>]

On 27 Feb 2004, at 0:50, Hartmut Pilch wrote:

> Allerdings ist die Behauptung vom "Zurueckbomben ins 19. Jahrhundert"
> Polemik fuer den Patentanwaltstammtisch.  Ausser an diesem Stammtisch
> ist sonst nirgendwo irgend jemand der Meinung, dass das Patentwesen
> unbedingt alle wichtigen Bereiche der Wirtschaft erfassen muss und
> dass Forschung im Bereich der angewandten Naturwissenschaften
> rueckwaertsgewandt und dem 19. Jahrhundert zugehoerig sei.

<http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2004/200402272/defa 
ult.htm>  

[...]

If our objective is to maximize economic growth, are we striking the 
right balance in our protection of intellectual property rights? Are 
the protections sufficiently broad to encourage innovation but not so 
broad as to shut down follow-on innovation? Are such protections so 
vague that they produce uncertainties that raise risk premiums and 
the cost of capital? How appropriate is our current system--developed 
for a world in which physical assets predominated--for an economy in 
which value increasingly is embodied in ideas rather than tangible 
capital? The importance of such questions is perhaps most readily 
appreciated here in Silicon Valley. Rationalizing the differences 
between intellectual property rights as defined and enforced in the 
United States and those of our trading partners has emerged as a 
seminal issue in our trade negotiations.

If the form of protection afforded to intellectual property rights 
affects economic growth, it must do so by increasing the underlying 
pace of output per labor hour, our measure of productivity growth. 
Ideas are at the center of productivity growth. Multifactor 
productivity by definition attempts to capture product innovations 
and insights in the way that capital and labor are organized to 
produce output. Ideas are also embodied directly in the capital that 
we employ. In essence, the growth of productivity attributable to 
factors other than indigenous natural resources and labor skill, is 
largely a measure of the contribution of ideas to economic growth and 
to our standards of living.

Understanding the interplay of ideas and economic growth should be an 
area of active economic analysis, which for so many generations has 
focused mainly on physical things. This work will not be easy. Even 
as straightforward an issue as isolating the effect of the length of 
patents on overall economic growth, a prominent issue recently before 
our Supreme Court, poses obvious formidable challenges. Still, we 
must begin the important work of developing a framework capable of 
analyzing the growth of an economy increasingly dominated by 
conceptual products.

[...]

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