Eminent Domain for Intellectual Property Rights
A solution to Healthcare and food crisis problems?
‘Eminent Domain’ is the process by which government can take private property when it deems it necessary for the greater good. For example government may want to build a road, and uses ‘Eminent Domain’ to force owners of the land over which the road is to run to sell their land to the government.
I have never heard of Eminent Domain being used on any type of property except real estate, but there’s no reason why the process should not apply to any property. Certainly the 14th amendment prevents the US government taking any property, not just real property, without due process, and Eminent Domain is the Due Process.
Would why there be a public interest in the public acquiring Intellectual Property Rights?
Suppose a pharmaceutical company discovered a pill that cured cancer or a biogenetic company invented a seed that could feed the world. The owners of the intellectual property rights of the pill or the seed would be obliged, at least as a public company, to set the price of their product so as to maximize their profits. Typically the profit they make, as a function of price, is a bell curve. At very low prices they would sell large quantities, but at low unit profit and so make low profits. At very high prices they would make high profit per unit but a low number of sales. Somewhere in the middle they make the maximum profit out of a somewhat high profit per unit and a somewhat high sales volume.
Typically the company would expend effort making sure that only those who paid their price, got the benefit. Those who could not afford the price must die of cancer or starvation.
Suppose government acquired the rights to the pill or the seed. Suppose they paid the company the same as it would make at the optimal price. Suppose government ‘sold’ the solution to the same people who would have bought it at the profit-maximizing price, but also ‘gave it away’ to everyone else. This trick is possible to do for government, but it is not possible for a company to do. For example government could pay for the solution using general taxation (which is normally intended to be progressive: charging more tax to richer people), and give the solution away for free to everyone.
The result would be that the solution was available to everyone: everyone who had cancer could be saved by the drug; everyone who was hungry could get the seeds.
That is a better solution. The company and the rich people got the same benefits and some poor people got extra benefits. Why wouldn’t we do it?