You hear about big losses that major companies suffer from patent and copyright violators  and the cost of theft of intellectual property.  Makes you wonder how much money they make because they have these patents and copyrights which most people do not violate.

The thought of posting this article, led me to do a little Google searching for support.  I found Patent Losses Trump ObamaCare Benefits which gives a slightly different aspect of the value of patents.  Just do your own Google search on “patent losses” for a whole raft of other articles.

If you Google search “intellectual property loss” you find articles such as Losses from intellectual property espionage: a trillion dollars a year.  Again, one has to ask about the money made from protection of intellectual property that the non-violators fork over.

I am not in any way trying to promote the idea of patents and copyrights, but what I am trying to show is the tremendous financial gain that major corporations and the “job creators” get from the government programs and laws of patent and copyright protection.  You’d think these entities would have some appreciation for the great benefit they are receiving and might want to pay some taxes to keep this benefit flowing to them.  What about the cost to the government of the courts and law enforcement that does help recoup some of the losses from patent and copyright violations?  Is there any appreciation for that. Apparently, according to what the Republicans say about taxing “job creators”, you would be wrong to think there is any appreciation commensurate with the size of the benefit.

Of course, any benefit to corporations and wealthy “job creators” they get from these protections is a loss to the people who pay the higher prices for these protected products.  This makes this all a double example of how the wealthy benefit from government, do not want to pay for it, and foist the costs on the other 99% of us.

If I were a wealthy person, I would be more careful about bringing up this whole topic of “class warfare”.  What if the 99% woke up to what the wealthy were getting for free and how much it was costing them to provide it to the wealthy?  They might decide the wealthy ought to pay for what they get or lose the benefit of the government sponsored protection.  If I were wealthy, I would shut up about this and be happy to take the free ride I was getting.

I guess the wealthy never heard the maxim, “Let sleeping dogs lie.“