The Patents, the Power

I had the opportunity to have a couple conversations about Patents for Power with Diplomat editors. Here’s a text convo with Catherine Putz:

Is there tension between intellectual property rights and innovation? 

Of course. There’s a contradiction between the need to share technology across an industry on the one hand, and the need to protect the incentives of inventors on the other. There have certainly been occasions in which robust patent law came into conflict with military innovation; a great example involves the unwillingness of the Wright Brothers to license certain inventions to other airplane makers during World War I. 

And here’s a podcast with Ankit Panda, which covers much of the same ground but in a more audible format, if you’re into that kind of thing.