Intellectual Property Rights

Patents, copyrights, trademarks, and other forms of intellectual property protection are crucial ways in which society rewards inventors and other creative individuals. Yet convergence across fields of science and technology increases the probability of negative impacts, such as “patent thickets” in which it becomes difficult to combine patents that belong to different holders, in order to create a new product or industry. While some philosophers believed intellectual property was a natural right, it generally is explained in terms of its utility for society in encouraging innovation. Yet monopolies may file blocking patents, with no intention of using them but merely to prevent other companies from competing, and at the opposite extreme, today’s information technologies make copying of many forms of communication so easy that they severely undermine copyright protections. Norms of intellectual property harmonize with well-established societal institutions, yet many fields of science and engineering are more like social movements and thus less compatible with rigid rules. To the extent that science and technology convergence is itself a social movement, it will encourage research and debate about what norms are most appropriate in different areas and during the chaotic periods when they converge.