There certainly are bad actors, deceptive demand letters, and frivolous litigation in the patent system. The important question, though, is whether there is a systemic problem requiring further systemic revisions to the patent system.
LAW
All laws must be objective (and objectively justifiable): men must know clearly, and in advance of taking an action, what the law forbids them to do (and why), what constitutes a crime and what penalty they will incur if they commit it. – AYN RAND
Rescuing BlackBerry?
The latter, nationalistic motive of buying BlackBerry or any other company is misguided.
Freedom of Speech vs. Embarrassing The Government
A federal employee decides to write a book on his knowledge of a known government scandal. After signing a book contract with a major publisher, the book deal is subsequently forbidden—by the government. Does this sound like a George Orwell novel? Or an Ayn Rand work...
Are Guns the Problem?
Why — at a time in our history when guns were readily available, when a person could just walk into a store or order a gun through the mail, when there were no FBI background checks, no waiting periods, no licensing requirements — was there not the frequency and kind of gun violence that we sometimes see today, when access to guns is more restricted?
Honesty and Trust
The fact that honesty and trust are so vital should make us rethink just how much tolerance we should have for criminals and dishonest people.
Aaron Alexis: The Homegrown Terrorist
Aaron Alexis was the product of a psychiatric/political establishment committed to making excuses at all costs.
NSA Spying, Economic Intervention, and Legal Positivism
Legal Positivism has slowly eaten away the Constitution and individual rights.
The Myth of the “Patent Troll” Litigation Explosion
Unfortunately, the complaints today about today’s patent litigation crisis arise more from unchecked intuitions about what feels like a bad situation, from unrealistic assumptions about how much certainty we can achieve in the patent system, and from emotionally-compelling anecdotes about innovators running into trouble with patents.
Obama’s Whistleblower Protection of Convenience
“Hope and change” were never about ideals or principles. They were about power.
Chris Christie vs. the Constitution
Christie, like most career politicians, has unlimited faith in unlimited government.
Profiling for Crime: Who Is Too Blame?
A law-abiding black person denied a taxi is rightfully angered, but to whom should his anger be directed, at the driver who’s trying to protect his life or at the people who’ve instilled fear by robbing and assaulting cabbies?
Print the Legend: Thoughts on The Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman Tragedy
Martin was the aggressor in the physical encounter.
Hillary Clinton Insults Herself–and Women Everywhere
Hillary Clinton recently said she hoped the U.S. would elect a woman to the White House because it would send “exactly the right historical signal” to men, women and children. She said women in politics need to “dare to compete” and the nation...
Edward Snowden: Traitor by What Definition?
It’s now an undisputed fact, in the minds of our esteemed government officials: Edward Snowden, the man who exposed the U.S. government for spying on private, law-abiding citizens, is a traitor. Exactly how did this label get smuggled in to the whole controversy about...
Edward Snowden vs. Fascism
Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man’s only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.” — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old ex-CIA technician who has come forward to self-identify as the source for news reports about massive...
NSA, Obama and The Loss of Trust
Amid all the heated cross-currents of debate about the National Security Agency’s massive surveillance program, there is a growing distrust of the Obama administration that makes weighing the costs and benefits of the NSA program itself hard to assess. The...
Sex and the Military
The headline on the front page of the New York Times said it all: “Women in the Senate Confront the Military on Sex Assaults.” In a triumphalist article showcasing the growing numbers of women on the Senate Armed Services Committee, “one of the...
Obama Exploits a Compliant America
“You can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. We’re going to have to make some choices as a society.” So says Barack Obama, in defense of his administration’s policy of monitoring the phone...
Alan Dershowitz vs. Ben Franklin
The collection of millions of Americans’ phone records by the National Security Agency is a necessary compromise on privacy —but should be monitored to keep it from being abused, renowned civil rights attorney Alan Dershowitz says. “Even Benjamin Franklin...
Unemployment: A Deadlier Disaster for the Third World
As wage rates rise, workers can more and more afford to accept lesser increases along with improved working conditions of a kind that must be at their expense.
Obama’s “Transformation” of Free Speech
Obama represents the worst in people: Unaccountability, resentment, envy and unearned entitlement. He speaks to the small-minded and petty in people, and he has the “audacity” to call this “progressive.”
The Right to Self-Defense is Deeper than Gun Control
So many of the issues of our time — or perhaps any time — hinge on whether one considers the full context, or only one element of it.
Guns Save Lives
We almost never hear about these hundreds of thousands of defensive uses of guns from the media, which will report the killing of a dozen people endlessly around the clock.
Fact-Free Crusades: How Gun Control Laws Disarm Law Abiding Citizens
The dirty little secret is that gun control laws do not actually control guns. They disarm law-abiding citizens, making them more vulnerable to criminals, who remain armed in disregard of such laws.
How Copyright Drives Innovation in Scholarly Publishing
This basic economic fact—dynamic development of innovative distribution mechanisms require substantial investment in both people and resources—is what makes commercialization an essential feature of both copyright policy and law (and of all intellectual property doctrines).
Gay Marriage and The Role of State
The legitimate functions of a properly limited government do not include either stigmatizing gay behavior or applauding it.
Selling Horse Meat as Beef: Buyer Beware, Too?
In my last article I wrote about stores selling products past their best before date—such as the expired canned lobster pate, which raised demands for legislation against selling expired food products in Canada. I argued that such legislation would be a violation of...
It’s Never Too Soon to Repeal ObamaCare
Both sides ignore that ObamaCare is integral to an unmistakable progression in American health care; the law takes us from partial to total government-controlled medicine.
Consumer Protection: Regulation vs. Reputation
A Canadian woman recently bought a can of lobster pate at a Wal-Mart store. The pate was about a year and half past its best before date, and the woman claimed that she felt ill about four hours after consuming some of the pate. In this era of the nanny state, the...
Columbine Survivor Asks the Hard Questions About Guns
It’s amazing. When Hollywood celebrities who support gun control or gun bans advocate these policies, we’re supposed to humbly and uncritically listen. Even when some celebrities, such as Rosie O’Donnell, support gun bans while claiming special exceptions for...
The “Common Law Property” Myth in the Libertarian Critique of IP Rights (Part 2)
IP rights have developed in the same way as property rights in land with both legislatures and courts creating, repealing, and extending doctrines in an important institutional and doctrinal evolution of these property rights securing technological innovation and creative works.
The Founders and the “General Welfare”
The Constitution limits the powers of the Federal government. However, even a perfect document cannot stand up to philosophical evasion and corruption. Without the proper moral base, the principles of the Constitution could not be defended, much less kept alive. To...
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