Getting Creative to Market

Haiku of the Day:
owning ideas
illusion in the mind's eye
unstolen sharing

Current intellectual property law, designed originally to protect the rights of individual creators, has been so thoroughly gamed by an elite super-minority. Whether patents or copyrights, the bulk of value comes from exploitation by an ever-narrowing field of global owners, collecting dust as the parent companies' outdated model for profiting from these creations struggles against the new reality of global trade. Companies are bought and sold for precisely the reason that their intellectual property is never transferred; a market, much like those for stocks, bonds, and commodities, allow the creator and distributor to:
* define a market by setting the number of partial owners;
* find a market price for the underlying asset through public offering;
* realize a gain (for creators) or secure supply (if a distributor) before a product has proven track record;
* concentrate on their business, not contractual obligations.

What would this mean for the global economy? Rapid, sustainable growth as both creators and their distributors tune in and find the market. An intellectual property market will bring every new thing to end users faster, cheaper, and without the nearly ubiquitous End User License Agreements that pretend to control every aspect of the consumer's use of what the consumer has already paid to use. Is there a downside for existing powers? Hardly; the enormous investments made to protect technology with other technology merely broaden the portfolio, each its own profit center as those protective measures are themselves sold at a price the market will bear.