Members of the media look at a robot system for porotic laparoscopic surgery during a preview of the National Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship Week in Beijing in October 2018. The US has criticised China for intellectual property theft. Photo: Xinhua Members of the media look at a robot system for porotic laparoscopic surgery during a preview of the National Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship Week in Beijing in October 2018. The US has criticised China for intellectual property theft. Photo: Xinhua
Members of the media look at a robot system for porotic laparoscopic surgery during a preview of the National Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship Week in Beijing in October 2018. The US has criticised China for intellectual property theft. Photo: Xinhua
Walter E. Block
Opinion

Opinion

Walter E. Block

The US is targeting China for intellectual property theft, but is the fight really worth it?

  • While intellectual property protection initially spurs innovation, it can end up hampering it in the long run
  • From an ethical point of view, penalising the theft of ideas wrongly presumes that ideas are in short supply and that we can properly define their value

Walter E. Block
Walter E. Block

Updated: 4:09pm, 17 Feb, 2020

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Members of the media look at a robot system for porotic laparoscopic surgery during a preview of the National Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship Week in Beijing in October 2018. The US has criticised China for intellectual property theft. Photo: Xinhua Members of the media look at a robot system for porotic laparoscopic surgery during a preview of the National Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship Week in Beijing in October 2018. The US has criticised China for intellectual property theft. Photo: Xinhua
Members of the media look at a robot system for porotic laparoscopic surgery during a preview of the National Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship Week in Beijing in October 2018. The US has criticised China for intellectual property theft. Photo: Xinhua
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Walter E. Block

Walter E. Block

Walter E. Block, Ph.D, is Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics at Loyola University New Orleans