Intellectual Property

Intellectual property is an important concept that everyone has indirectly thought about at one point in his or her life. From a personal standpoint, I would not be fine with another person or organization simply using me for my thoughts and work and reaping all of the benefits. This personal view can be strengthened on a larger scale by looking at all individuals. As a society, we measure our success by our growth. Without growth, our society stands still. Growth is the most important thing our world needs because our world needs to be able to predict and prevent any sort of bad dilemma that may occur such as global warming. Back to intellectual property, our society cannot grow if individuals are not encouraged to invent things and try to think outside of the box. Intellectual property essentially gives inventors and thinkers a reason to keep inventing because they know that they will be compensated for their efforts in some way. Patents are a form of intellectual property that allows inventors to protect their invention from outsiders. In particular, there are ten-year patents on medications so that those who invent medicines can be compensated financially for the next 10 years without having to worry about a competitor swooping in and producing a cheaper version of the drug. On the whole, intellectual property protects people and does no harm to society. Sure, it could be argued that our society could be more efficient if people could take an invention and reproduce it a lower cost quickly. It comes down to the fact that there will be a few inventions if the inventors are not rewarded for their efforts in some way.