We all have our issues that we care about, I suppose. But I don’t know why more people aren’t up in arms with me about the United States’ ludicrous intellectual property laws. Well, Marketplace tonight slapped this thorn in my side with this story about patents that have been awarded for innovative ways to save on taxes. People who study the tax laws carefully enough to find loopholes to help their clients to pay less into the Federal Government’s coffers are then protected by that same Government by anyone who wants to do the same thing without paying the first person to do it. Or, the first person to successfully register a patent claim on it. Disgusting.

The Federal Government’s claim to legitimacy in protecting intellectual property is rooted in this clause from Article 1, section 8 of the constitution: “The Congress shall have power … [t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” I’d be willing to bet that throughout the history of our nation, no one has ever referred to tax experts as “authors” or “inventors” in natural conversation. More importantly, deciphering tax law is neither science nor useful art. I could go on and on. It’s just bad.

Really, I’m pretty much opposed to all business process patents. And all software patents. I’m skeptical of traditional patents for inventions of hardware, but they sure don’t offend me the same way. This is bad. There’s apparently some legislative effort to stop issuing such patents. I realize it may not be a matter of life and death for anyone, but when many people are offended by the mere fact of someone being rich, I think more attention is due to ways in which people get rich, especially when they rely on help from governments and curtail the freedom of others.

ugh