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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

The time has come for a philosophical change [phys.org] in the way the American legal system, government and private business view innovations created by private citizens, a University of Kansas professor argues in a new law review article. "Citizen innovators" have the legal right to develop new and better technologies without fear of interference from overregulation and excessive intellectual property. The "right to innovate" flows from the U.S. Constitution, the common law, federal laws called "organic statutes" and presidential executive orders.

Andrew Torrance, Earl B. Shurtz Research Professor at KU School of Law and visiting scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and his colleague, Eric von Hippel, T. Wilson Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, have co-authored "The Right to Innovate," a Michigan State Law Review article that offers three approaches to protecting "citizen innovators" and their right to engage in noncommercial innovation to satisfy their own needs and to share their innovations freely for the betterment of society.

Technology has greatly leveled the playing field of innovation. Whereas private companies and government were formerly believed to create almost all new products and technologies, von Hippel's pioneering economic research on "user innovation" has revealed that private citizens can, and do, also produce new medicines, medical devices, software, automotive improvements, educational methods and myriad other useful inventions in their own homes. As long as they are not endangering anyone or profiting from their work, their innovative activities are largely beyond the jurisdiction of regulatory agencies and intellectual property owners, the authors argue.

Original Submission