Intellectual Property Law and Interactive Media: Free for a Fee Book

This book has many strengths. It is quite thorough. You can find it for free on-line (rightly so). It's packed with terrific history on patents, beginning with their inception as a royal privilege (sister of the trading company).

The book wears a bit thin, as arguments are repeated in slightly different formulations.

Also, as the authors catalog just about every reason to get rid of patents, it should come as no surprise that some fall short.

They do succeed in their overarching point: dispelling the myth that there exists positive evidence that patents are a necessary evil.

They deserve credit for taking on the Pharma industry, which provides the toughest nut to crack for the anti-patent movement. This chapter was less than convincing in its logic -- though filled with excellent historical factoids on innovation in medicine -- but they do come up with a very creative alternative to patents to maintain the profit incentive for medical innovation.

At the end of the day, they had me convinced that 95% of the time patents are completely unnecessary, and in the remaining 5%, their value could be replicated by some other institution that didn't carry such high residual costs.

Not bad.