Bill Gates - "IP is the incentive system for the products of the future" [2005]
Q: In recent years, there&#x27;s been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, &quot;We&#x27;ve got to look at patents, we&#x27;ve got to look at copyrights.&quot; What&#x27;s driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?<p>+<p>Bill Gates: <i>&quot;No, I&#x27;d say that of the world&#x27;s economies, there&#x27;s more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don&#x27;t think that those incentives should exist.<p>And this debate will always be there. I&#x27;d be the first to say that the patent system can always be tuned--including the U.S. patent system. There are some goals to cap some reform elements. But the idea that the United States has led in creating companies, creating jobs, because we&#x27;ve had the best intellectual-property system--there&#x27;s no doubt about that in my mind, and when people say they want to be the most competitive economy, they&#x27;ve got to have the incentive system. Intellectual property is the incentive system for the products of the future.&quot;</i><p>-<p>Note: I&#x27;m against Intellectual Monopoly and turning something non-rival into something rival by making it artificially scarce.<p>Imagine how smart humanity would be if there were no longer any walls blocking our children&#x27;s curiosity?<p><i>&quot;The current [system] is based on a false idea of “immaterial scarcity.” It believes that an exaggerated set of intellectual property monopolies – for copyrights, trademarks and patents – should restrain the sharing of scientific, social and economic innovations. Hence the system discourages human cooperation, excludes many people from benefiting from innovation and slows the collective learning of humanity. In an age of grave global challenges, the political economy keeps many practical alternatives sequestered behind private firewalls or unfunded if they cannot generate adequate profits.&quot;</i><p>Are proprietary non-modular black-box solutions the best for our future?<p>Or does it make people ignorant?<p>Can discoveries&#x2F;inventions happen outside corporate walls?<p>If so, how?<p>Could, for example, a fractal <i>Open Value Network</i>, used by Sensorica and others, lead to new ways of sharing resources and producing the things we need in an open, transparent way?<p>I think our current economic system is dogmatic as it hasn&#x27;t yet found a way to incorporate the zero-marginal cost of digital reproduction&#x2F;transmission&#x2F;storage.<p>The question that is in my mind when posting this is: does creating software require incentives? What would a F&#x2F;LOSS world, without IP enforcement, BUT with authorship claims and a shared record of &#x27;who was first&#x27;, look like?<p>I am slowly learning more about the system and it&#x27;s origins, and I enjoy the discussions on this website.