Patents Bad DA - Michigan 2024 STARTER

Patents Bad/Abolish Patents—2024 Starter Packet
1NC
1NC---CP
The United States federal government should abolish patents.
Patents discourage innovation---the counterplan solves
Levine ’16 [David; July 28; Ph.D. and John H. Biggs Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis, studying intellectual property and endogenous growth in dynamic general equilibrium models; Science Business, “The Great IP Debate: Do patents do more harm than good?” https://sciencebusiness.net/news/79887/The-Great-IP-Debate:-Do-patents-do-more-harm-than-good]
Patents discourage innovation. When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started developing the first Apple computers in a garage, they did not worry much about patents. They shared and borrowed ideas from their network of fellow geeks. If they had had to pay royalties on all the software they borrowed, today we would have no email, no smartphones, no What’s App, no Google. The most important software innovations in the US happened before the US began allowing software patenting (in Europe, software patents as such are not possible.) More recently, the pace of innovation slowed.
Today, patents are often used as weapons. In the 1950s, an American inventor filed so-called “submarine patents” to claim an early form of machine vision technology; when others decades later developed bar code and other machine readers he sued to protect his previously unnoticed patents and collected more than $1 billion – even though the real development work had been done by others.
As another example, big companies today routinely cross-license patents to avoid blocking one another – but in the process also block new entrants that could disrupt the market, improve services and lower costs. That hurts consumers and inventors.
Patents are not necessary for economic growth. While the US and Europe have long-established patent systems, China’s high-growth economy does not; only recently has its domestic patent system grown, and its purpose is not so much to protect inventors as to lend credibility to their work.
In fact, patents actually hurt the economy. In the US, the cost of patent trolls – firms that acquire strategic patents and use legal threats to extract steep royalties from real innovators – now amounts to 12 per cent of business R&D spending. It is, in essence, a new tax on innovation.
Society can be more innovative without patents. One study of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the world’s first technology fair in London, found that only 10 per cent of the innovations on display had been patented. More recently, a Carnegie Mellon survey of companies in the mid-1990s found fewer than half of innovations had been patented. Another survey of European companies found just 25 percent of process innovations and 36 per cent of product innovations were patented. Most innovations were protected using the advantages of a “first mover” or trade secrets.
1NC---AI
AI patents depress innovation---laundry list.
Raid ’18 [Shlomit and Xiaoqiong Liu; August 2018; Professor of Law at Yale University, Visiting Professor at the Fordham University School of Law, Fellow at the Information Society Project; Engineer and Fellow at the Fordham Intellectual Property Institute; Cardozo Law Review, “When Artificial Intelligence Systems Produce Inventions: An Alternative Model for Patent Law at the 3A Era,” vol. 39]
VI. An Alternative Model for Patent Law at the 3A Era - Incentivizing Stakeholders Within the AI Multiplayer Model
A. Rethinking the Incentive Effect of the Current Patent Regime
The patent reward in general is questionable. Scholars argue that patent laws fail to reach their goal of maximizing benefit to society. Granting twenty years of exclusive rights to the inventor or the inventor's transferee may not significantly incentivize inventors. Surveys show that even CEOs in most industries see patent incentives as relatively unimportant. 192 If corporate leaders who are driven by a profit motive do not see the value of patent incentives, then certainly such an incentive is meaningless to the multiple players and cumulative patent models. When determining whether to grant patent rights in uncertain situations, therefore, such as in regard to inventions by AI systems and the multiplayer and cumulative patent models, we should not overemphasize the importance of the patent system compared to other alternatives.
What are the flaws in patent incentives that make them irrelevant to AI? First, patent law only rewards the first inventor, while second comers get nothing. The drive to be first - even by an hour or two 193 - can force competing owners of AI systems deep into diminishing returns. This is wasteful.
Second, patent law grants exactly the same length of protection for all inventions, 194 "regardless of [their] R&D costs and … other economically relevant factors." 195 Although this approach is simple, it "grossly overrewards some inventions and underrewards others." 196
Third, patents are superfluous for products that would be invented anyway. 197 For instance, "conventional software developed rapidly even before courts were willing to grant it patent protection." 198 Patent protection serves a limited purpose.
As a fourth point, patent law fails in the multiplayer and cumulative patent environment characteristic of AI systems. It is not flexible in allocating rewards and is thus economically inefficient. Indeed, patent law only offers four ways to allocate rewards among two parties: "0:0 (both patents invalid), 50:50 (both patents upheld), 100:0 (first patent valid, second invalid), [and] 0:100 (first patent invalid, second valid)." 199 Patent law may also impede future technological progress by making it harder for other AI systems to build on earlier inventions. 200
Fifth, in practice, patent law would pose difficulties in bringing patent infringement actions against or on behalf of inventions by an AI or against the copying of an AI's invention. Because of the unpredictable nature of AI, it is very difficult to identify the human that is responsible for the "actions" of an AI system. Sometimes the human involved in the process does not know how an AI system arrives at an invention. In other cases, the AI system can "break" data into electronic nanocomponents and rebuild it in different ways, thus rendering it impossible to establish proof of infringement. 201
AI arms racing is unavoidable---only an American advantage deters a nuclear war with revisionist powers.
Kroenig ’21 [Matthew; 2021; PhD, Berkeley, Professor of Government at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University; Air University, “Will Emerging Technology Cause Nuclear War? Bringing Geopolitics Back In,” vol. 15 no. 4]
Will emerging technology cause nuclear war? For more than 70 years, the world has avoided major-power conflict, and many attribute this era of peace to nuclear weapons.1 In situations of mutually assured destruction, neither side has an incentive to launch a nuclear first strike because doing so will only result in self-annihilation. Maintaining secure, second-strike capabilities—the ability to absorb an enemy nuclear attack and respond with a devastating counterattack—is the key to deterrence.2 Recently, analysts have begun to worry, however, that new military technologies may call into question this model of global strategic stability.3
The world is experiencing a fourth industrial revolution (4IR) in which a wave of new and transformative technologies is being developed, including artificial intelligence (AI), additive manufacturing, quantum information technology, hypersonic missiles, biotechnology, and directed energy.4 While these technologies are expected to have profound implications for societies and economies, most are dual use and will also affect national security, including nuclear strategic stability.
According to an emerging conventional wisdom, new technology may upset nuclear strategic stability by calling into question the survivability of nuclear forces.5 The solution, according to some analysts, is for nuclear-armed states to eschew military applications of at least some of these technologies and lead an international effort to control their spread.6 But these studies too often consider new technology and nuclear strategy in the abstract without adequately considering the prevailing geopolitical context into which these new technologies have been introduced.
This article argues understanding the link between new technology and nuclear stability must consider the prevailing geopolitical context. For the past several decades, the United States, its Allies, and like-minded partners have formed the core of the existing international order.7 They have benefited from this system and would like to see it strengthened, revitalized, and defended. If the new technologies of the 4IR are incorporated into US, Ally, and partner militaries, then any advantages they provide will likely reinforce the prevailing distribution of power and existing sources of strategic stability.
In contrast, China and Russia are revisionist powers intent on disrupting or displacing the US-led system, and they would likely employ new technological advantages to pursue revisionist aims. The greatest danger from emerging technology for nuclear stability, therefore, may result from the possibility that new technology provides Russia or China an enhanced military advantage over vulnerable US Allies and partners, leading to a regional conflict with a significant risk of nuclear escalation.
Russia and China are revisionist---maintaining military dominance is critical to avert great power war.
Trotti ’20 [Christian and Matthew Kroenig; February 17; assistant director of Forward Defense at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security; PhD, Berkeley, Professor of Government at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University; Nuclear Modernization in the 21st Century, “Modernization as a Promoter of International Security,” DOI: 10.4324/9780429435829]
The modernization programs of the United States and its democratic allies at the core of the international system tend to promote international security. On the other hand, the nuclear modernization programs of revisionist autocratic powers intent on challenging the international system tend to threaten global peace and stability. Thus, not all modernization programs are created equal. It is ultimately the underlying geopolitical conditions, and not solely the capabilities themselves, which determine the extent to which modernization programs promote or diminish international security.
Since 1945, the United States has been the leader of a rules-based international order that has brought the world unprecedented levels of peace, prosperity, and freedom.3 U.S. nuclear weapons have provided the security backbone of that order by deterring major power conflict in Europe and Asia.4 Additionally, U.S. extended nuclear security guarantees have protected the entire free world and dissuaded many capable states from developing independent nuclear capabilities. The modernization of U.S. nuclear weapons will therefore continue to reinforce these major sources of geopolitical peace and stability.
Alternatively, Russia, China, and North Korea are opposed to major elements of the existing international system and seek in varying ways to disrupt or displace it. Given their revisionist geopolitical objectives, nuclear modernization in these countries tends to threaten international peace and stability.
Geopolitical intentions guide nuclear strategy, which in turn informs modernization programs. It is therefore essential to account for a state’s position within the international system when evaluating the likely effects of nuclear modernization on international stability.
The rest of this essay proceeds in four parts. First, it explains why U.S. nuclear weapons serve as unique guarantor of international security in the postwar world order. Second, it argues that the United States must modernize its aging nuclear capabilities in order to sustain its longstanding role in promoting global security. Third, it addresses the ways in which revisionist powers seek to use their nuclear modernization programs for destabilizing ends. Fourth, it briefly considers the role of other nations’ nuclear forces, including: Britain, France, India, Israel, and Pakistan. Finally, it concludes with implications for scholarship and for policy.
The U.S.-led, rules-based international order
Following the end of World War II, the United States and its victorious allies built the international system in which we reside today.5 Like past hegemons, the United States ordered an international system to suit its interests. Unlike past hegemons, however, Washington did not seek to rule through formal empire. Rather, it sought to reproduce a variant of its rules-based domestic political system for the global system. This rules-based international order possesses multiple components. First, Washington and its allies established a wide range of international institutions, such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, to encourage multilateral solutions to a wide variety of challenges. Second, it sought to correct the protectionism of the interwar years by creating an open economic system defined by the free flow of trade and capital across borders. Third, the United States and its democratic allies have promoted freedom, human rights, and good governance abroad. Lastly, Washington employed its unmatched military might to provide the underlying stability and security which has allowed the overall system to function.
While the system is imperfect and the United States has sometimes disobeyed the rules it helped to write, the rules-based order has nevertheless produced remarkable results. Humanity has been blessed by the absence of great power war for over seventy years. Global standards of living are much higher today than seven decades ago.6 And by the mid-2000s, more people were living under democratic governments than at any time in world history.7
As the world’s most powerful state and the architect of this system, the United States advanced and defended this order through a variety of economic, diplomatic, and military means. An underappreciated but central pillar of this rules-based order, however, has been the U.S. nuclear arsenal. U.S. nuclear weapons have provided the backbone for the underlying security element of the global system.
U.S. nuclear weapons and great power peace
U.S. nuclear weapons contribute to global stability by deterring great power war. U.S. nuclear weapons have deterred revisionist autocratic powers, such as the Soviet Union during the Cold War and Russia, China, and North Korea today, from attacking U.S. allies in Europe and Asia.
Scholars have long appreciated the role of nuclear weapons in deterring war and contributing to the long period of great power peace. Indeed, much social science scholarship credits the nuclear revolution with transforming international politics and making large-scale war among the major powers unthinkable.8
What much of this literature ignores, however, is the unique role played by American nuclear weapons. Unlike other nuclear powers that seek to deter attacks on themselves only, the United States aims to deter attacks against the entire free world.9 The United States extends deterrence to over thirty formal treaty allies, including twenty-eight members of NATO, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and arguably others. The U.S. policy of extended deterrence provides geopolitical stability in Europe and Asia, the two most important geostrategic regions on the planet and the home of all the major nuclear powers.
As a status quo power and leader of the international system, the United States has had little interest in or incentive to use military force to revise the territorial status quo in Europe or Asia. Following the end of World War II, for example, the United States’ immediate goal was in setting up independent governments in defeated countries, allowing free elections, and returning home.10
The Soviet Union, on the other hand, had an explicit goal of spreading Marxist revolutions to other nations in Europe and around the world. It established puppet states under Moscow’s control in the territories it occupied in Eastern Europe. It employed military force, in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, in order to force these states to remain in the Soviet camp. The Soviet Union also attempted to use military coercion in a failed bid to wrest control of Berlin from the West in a series of crises during the late 1950s and 1960s. In Asia, Moscow gave the green light to North Korea to invade its Southern neighbor and initiate the Korean War.11 These are only the major examples of Soviet militarized revisionism during the Cold War.
In the face of this threat from the Red Army, the United States remained in Europe at the behest of its allies to deter Russian invasion. In order to counter the Soviet Union’s conventional superiority in Europe, the United States and NATO relied heavily on nuclear deterrence.12 U.S. nuclear weapons and the requisite resolve to defend allies were critical to forcing Moscow’s submission in the Berlin Crises and to deterring war in Europe. In addition, the United States became more deeply involved in Asia, intervening militarily in Korea and in the Taiwan Straits to prevent communist forces from invading or threatening their neighbors.13 In sum, during the Cold War in Europe and Asia, the Soviet Union’s foreign policy was largely oriented toward revising the status quo, while the United States generally employed force, including nuclear deterrence, in order to uphold it.
Similarly today, Russia, China, and North Korea express their displeasure with the territorial status quo in their respective regions.14 Russian President Vladimir Putin refers to the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 21st century” and longs to re-establish a “greater-Russia.”15 He has been clear about his interest in re-establishing a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and he has already invaded two of his neighbors, Georgia and Ukraine. China has also declared a long-term intention to redraw the map of Asia to incorporate Taiwan and it has begun taking contested territory in the South China Sea through military coercion and gray-zone tactics. North Korea has engaged in repeated bouts of aggression against South Korea and Seoul’s American ally over the decades. It initiated the Korean War and seized the U.S.S. Pueblo during the Cold War. In recent years, Pyongyang has sunk a South Korean warship and shelled a South Korean island.
U.S. democratic allies in Europe and Asia consistently call upon the United States to maintain a robust nuclear strategy and posture in order to deter possible aggression from these autocratic and revisionist powers. For example, when U.S. President Obama considered the adoption of a nuclear No First Use Policy at the end of his term, U.S. allies resisted.16 Largely in response to allied demands, the United States agreed to keep the nuclear option on the table to deter conventional aggression. It has also developed nuclear capabilities, including the supplemental, low-yield capabilities called for in the 2018 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, with the explicit goal of extending deterrence and reassuring allies.17
Therefore, it is true that nuclear weapons have deterred great power war for over seventy years, but it is important to consider whose potential aggression has been deterred. If nuclear weapons were to be un-invented or nuclear deterrence to fail, any ensuing aggression would most likely be conducted, not by the United States, but by Moscow, Beijing, or Pyongyang agai

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