Fed up with the patent craze, The Economist Magazine wrote the following in a main editorial: “The granting of patents ‘inflames cupidity’, excites fraud, stimulates men to run after schemes that may enable them to levy a tax on the public, begets disputes and quarrels betwixt inventors, provokes endless lawsuits … The principle of the law from which such consequences flow cannot be just.” It’s not in current issue. That was published in 1851, but every word of it remains true today. It was once conventional wisdom among economists that state-granted monopolies were as bad as mercantilism. But in the … Continue reading Fallacy Run Amok