{"id":1443,"date":"2014-08-28T19:30:54","date_gmt":"2014-08-28T19:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cpip.gmu.edu\/?p=1443"},"modified":"2026-02-03T21:22:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:22:17","slug":"intellectual-property-innovation-and-economic-growth-mercatus-gets-it-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/2014\/08\/28\/intellectual-property-innovation-and-economic-growth-mercatus-gets-it-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"[Archived Post] Intellectual Property, Innovation and Economic Growth: Mercatus Gets it Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mark Schultz<\/a> & Adam Mossoff<\/a><\/p>\n

A handful of increasingly noisy critics of intellectual property (IP) have emerged within free market organizations. Both the emergence and vehemence of this group has surprised most observers, since free market advocates generally support property rights. It\u2019s true that there has long been a strain of IP skepticism among some libertarian intellectuals. However, the surprised observer would be correct to think that the latest critique is something new. In our experience, most free market advocates see the benefit and importance of protecting the property rights of all who perform productive labor \u2013 whether the results are tangible or intangible.<\/p>\n

How do the claims of this emerging critique stand up? We have had occasion to examine the arguments of free market IP skeptics before. (For example, see here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>.) So far, we have largely found their claims wanting.<\/p>\n

We have yet another occasion to examine their arguments, and once again we are underwhelmed and disappointed. We recently posted an essay<\/a> at AEI\u2019s Tech Policy Daily<\/a> prompted by an odd report<\/a> recently released by the Mercatus Center, a free-market think tank. The Mercatus report attacks recent research that supposedly asserts, in the words of the authors of the Mercatus report, that \u201cthe existence of intellectual property in an industry creates the jobs in that industry.\u201d They contend that this research \u201cprovide[s] no theoretical or empirical evidence to support\u201d its claims of the importance of intellectual property to the U.S. economy.<\/p>\n

Our AEI essay responds to these claims by explaining how these IP skeptics both mischaracterize the studies that they are attacking and fail to acknowledge the actual historical and economic evidence on the connections between IP, innovation, and economic prosperity. We recommend that anyone who may be confused by the assertions of any IP skeptics waving the banner of property rights and the free market read our essay<\/a> at AEI, as well as our previous essays in which we have called out similarly odd statements<\/a> from Mercatus about IP rights.<\/p>\n

The Mercatus report, though, exemplifies many of the concerns we raise about these IP skeptics, and so it deserves to be considered at greater length.<\/p>\n

For instance, something we touched on briefly in our AEI essay is the fact that the authors of this Mercatus report offer no empirical evidence of their own within their lengthy critique of several empirical studies, and at best they invoke thin theoretical support for their contentions.<\/p>\n

This is odd if only because they are critiquing several empirical studies that develop careful, balanced and rigorous models for testing one of the biggest economic questions in innovation policy: What is the relationship between intellectual property and jobs and economic growth?<\/p>\n

Apparently, the authors of the Mercatus report presume that the burden of proof<\/em> is entirely on the proponents of IP, and that a bit of hand waving using abstract economic concepts and generalized theory is enough to defeat arguments supported by empirical data and plausible methodology.<\/p>\n

This move raises a foundational question that frames all debates about IP rights today: On whom should the burden rest? On those who claim that IP has beneficial economic effects? Or on those who claim otherwise, such as the authors of the Mercatus report?<\/p>\n

The burden of proof here is an important issue. Too often, recent debates about IP rights have started from an assumption that the entire burden of proof rests on those investigating or defending IP rights. Quite often, IP skeptics appear to believe that their criticism of IP rights needs little empirical or theoretical validation, beyond talismanic invocations of \u201cmonopoly<\/a>\u201d and anachronistic assertions<\/a> that the Framers of the US Constitution were utilitarians.<\/p>\n

As we detail in our AEI essay, though, the problem with arguments like those made in the Mercatus report is that they contradict history and empirics. For the evidence that supports this claim, including citations to the many studies that are ignored by the IP skeptics at Mercatus and elsewhere, check out the essay<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite these historical and economic facts, one may still believe that the US would enjoy even greater prosperity without IP. But IP skeptics who believe in this counterfactual world face a challenge. As a preliminary matter, they ought to acknowledge that they are the ones swimming against the tide of history and prevailing belief. More important, the burden of proof is on them \u2013 the IP skeptics \u2013 to explain why the U.S. has long prospered under an IP system they find so odious and destructive of property rights and economic progress, while countries that largely eschew IP have languished. This obligation is especially heavy for one who seeks to undermine empirical work such as the USPTO Report<\/a> and other studies.<\/p>\n

In sum, you can\u2019t beat something with nothing. For IP skeptics to contest this evidence, they should offer more than polemical and theoretical broadsides. They ought to stop making faux originalist arguments<\/a> that misstate basic legal facts about property and IP<\/a>, and instead offer their own empirical evidence. The Mercatus report, however, is content to confine its empirics to critiques of others\u2019 methodology \u2013 including claims their targets did not make.<\/p>\n

For example, in addition to the several strawman attacks identified in our AEI essay, the Mercatus report constructs another strawman in its discussion of studies of copyright piracy done by Stephen Siwek for the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI). Mercatus inaccurately and unfairly implies that Siwek\u2019s studies on the impact of piracy in film and music assumed that every copy pirated was a sale lost \u2013 this is known as \u201cthe substitution rate problem.\u201d In fact, Siwek\u2019s methodology tackled that exact problem.<\/p>\n

IPI and Siwek never seem to get credit for this, but Siwek was careful to avoid the one-to-one substitution rate estimate that Mercatus and others foist on him and then critique as empirically unsound. If one actually reads his report<\/a>, it is clear that Siwek assumes that bootleg physical copies resulted in a 65.7% substitution rate, while illegal downloads resulted in a 20% substitution rate. Siwek\u2019s methodology anticipates and renders moot the critique that Mercatus makes anyway.<\/p>\n

After mischaracterizing these studies and their claims, the Mercatus report goes further in attacking them as supporting advocacy on behalf of IP rights. Yes, the empirical results have been used by think tanks, trade associations and others to support advocacy on behalf of IP rights. But does that advocacy make the questions asked and resulting research invalid? IP skeptics would have trumpeted results showing that IP-intensive industries had a minimal economic impact, just as Mercatus policy analysts have done<\/a> with alleged empirical claims about IP in other contexts. In fact, IP skeptics at free-market institutions repeatedly invoke studies<\/a> in policy advocacy<\/a> that allegedly show harm from patent litigation, despite these studies suffering from far<\/a> worse<\/a> problems<\/a> than anything alleged in their critiques of the USPTO and other studies.<\/p>\n

Finally, we noted in our AEI essay how it was odd to hear a well-known libertarian<\/em> think tank like Mercatus advocate for more government-funded programs, such as direct grants or prizes, as viable alternatives to individual property rights secured to inventors and creators. There is even more economic work<\/a> being done beyond the empirical studies we cited in our AEI essay on the critical role that property rights in innovation serve in a flourishing free market, as well as work<\/a> on the economic benefits of IP rights over other governmental programs like prizes.<\/p>\n

Today, we are in the midst of a full-blown moral panic about the alleged evils of IP. It\u2019s alarming that libertarians \u2013 the very people who should be defending all property rights \u2013 have jumped on this populist bandwagon. Imagine if free market advocates at the turn of the Twentieth Century had asserted that there was no evidence that property rights had contributed to the Industrial Revolution. Imagine them joining in common cause with the populist Progressives to suppress the enforcement of private rights and the enjoyment of economic liberty. It\u2019s a bizarre image, but we are seeing its modern-day equivalent, as these libertarians join the chorus of voices arguing against property and private ordering in markets for innovation and creativity.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also disconcerting that Mercatus appears to abandon its exceptionally high standards for scholarly work-product when it comes to IP rights. Its economic analyses and policy briefs on such subjects as telecommunications regulation, financial and healthcare markets, and the regulatory state have rightly made Mercatus a respected free-market institution. It\u2019s unfortunate that it has lent this justly earned prestige and legitimacy to stale and derivative arguments against property and private ordering in the innovation and creative industries. It\u2019s time to embrace the sound evidence and back off the rhetoric.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mark Schultz & Adam Mossoff A handful of increasingly noisy critics of intellectual property (IP) have emerged within free market organizations. Both the emergence and vehemence of this group has surprised most observers, since free market advocates generally support property rights. It\u2019s true that there has long been a strain of IP skepticism among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3627,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12,22,26,27,33,35,37,38,50,1],"tags":[92,267,337,373,478,480,493,502,678,702,708,711,732,774,947,1106,1163,1401,1527],"class_list":["post-1443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-copyright","category-copyright-theory","category-history-of-intellectual-property","category-innovation-2","category-intellectual-property-theory","category-law-and-economics","category-patent-law","category-patent-litigation","category-patent-theory","category-statistics","category-uncategorized","tag-aei","tag-chamber-of-commerce","tag-copyright-2","tag-creativity","tag-economic-prosperity","tag-economics","tag-eli-dourado","tag-empirical-study","tag-ian-robinson","tag-innovation","tag-institute-for-policy-innovation","tag-intellectual-property","tag-ip","tag-jobs","tag-mercatus-center","tag-patents","tag-prizes","tag-stephen-siwek","tag-uspto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15925,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443\/revisions\/15925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}