In this article, the author used the Watt story to relate to the intellectual property. The story begins with James Watt created the steam engine. Watt wanted to become the only one to provide this steam engine and earn money from it so he used the patents to protect his right toward the steam engine. He also wanted to prevent others from producing cheaper and better quality steam engine. With this, he can keep the price of his steam engine high. He had monopoly the production of the steam engine and this slowed the economic growth. This is an bad example of intellectual monopoly.
Intellectual Property
First, what do you think of intellectual property? For me, intellectual property means that the owner or the creator owns the ownership for what he or she created and prevent people to used it to earn money. For example, Joanne Kathleen Rowling, the author of Harry Potter owns the ownership for the harry potter’s story, the character inside the story, and basically she own everything about Harry Potter. She can earn money by selling the story books; sell the copyright to the movie industry and so on. She can do whatever she wants towards the story and Harry Potter. Because Harry Potter is very popular, many people will to use the name of “Harry Potter” to earn money and Joanne Kathleen Rowling have the right to sue them about it.
There are three broad types of intellectual property recognized in most legal systems which are patents, copyrights and trademarks.
The three broad types of intellectual property:
1. Patents – Patents is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state (national government) to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention.
2. Copyright – Copyright is the right given to the author to protect the original work of the authorship. It applies right to the copy, and author has the right to make copy and earn money from it. Copyright have a longer period compare to patent. For example, in United State, the copyright apply through the life of the author and plus 70 years the author die.
3. Trademarks – Trademarks serve to identify the providers of goods, services or ideas. For example, the yellow man from Digi is the trademark for Digi. Whenever people see the yellow man, they know that it is from Digi. Another example is the Apple logo from Apple. People will know that an advertisement is from apple when there is an Apple Logo on it. People recognize a several brand from its trademark.
Which one is the Apple's Logo?
For me, copyrights, patents and trademarks is very important to protect ones right for his creation. Without it, there will be no new creations or idea because everyone is too scared to share their creation or idea. They scared that what they have created will be used by the others and earn money without their knowing. This is very unfair for the creator. For example, people illegally download the music through internet is very unfair for the artist because the artist make living by selling their music. So, when people can have it online for free, what will the artist do for living?
Back to the topic, intellectual monopoly has their bad and good part. From the Watt’s story, we know that one of the bad parts of intellectual monopoly is slower down the economic growth. There are many good part of intellectual monopoly. The creator or owner can have all the rights towards their creation. For example, the author of Harry Potter, Joanne Kathleen Rowling has the ownership for everything about Harry Potter. If she did not monopolize Harry Potter, there will be different version of story of Harry Potter. People will use “Harry Potter” as a character in other story and this may confuse the reader.
As a conclusion, I think intellectual monopoly is not a bad things, people can own what he or she had created. This is their rights as the creator of it. What do you think about it?
