Are intellectual property laws more valuable in the United States since we are one of the top innovative countries in the world?
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I completely believe that intellectual property laws are more valuable and more highly needed in first-world countries, not even just the United States. In countries that are highly devoted to innovation and academia without intellectual property laws, I feel that there would be significantly less production of progressive ideas and research. Because of the ability to claim success and even income from findings of one's research, it provides an incentive to strive for the betterment of one's area. In third world countries, the need for intellectual property laws still exists however they are more pressing needs for the sake of survival such as food, water, shelter, and even human rights. If the United States were to completely eliminate intellectual property laws, I believe we would see a rise in people either publishing in areas solely with intellectual property laws or moving to said countries in order to continue to gain the aforementioned incentives. While property laws sometimes also inhibit the ability for innovation and for students to successfully succeed in school because of the requirement to purchase textbooks and other property protected by the laws if they did not exist we as a country would be further behind in our general population's ability to spread information. In order to balance the need for incentives for the sake of innovation but also allow for the use of people's works, I think it would be in the best interest of the general public to decrease or reevaluate the requirements and regulations of intellectual property. However, this would exclude intellectual property that is used for the safety of the general public, such as fingerprints, because by decreasing the protection on those aspects we could potentially increase the possibility of illegal collection of people's information during investigations. All in all, I agree that intellectual property laws as a whole are beneficial to the academic and public's interests because it allows those who present their ideas to not be discouraged by a system that does not value what they offer society.
