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Legal scholars, economists, activists, policymakers, industries, and trade organizations have held differing views on patents and engaged in contentious debates on the subject. Critical perspectives emerged in the nineteenth century, and recent debates have discussed the merits and faults of software patents and biological patents. These debates are part of a larger discourse on intellectual property protection which also reflects differing perspectives on copyright. ==History== Criticism of patents reached an early peak in Victorian Britain between 1850 and 1880, in a campaign against patenting that expanded to target copyright too and, in the judgment of historian Adrian Johns, "remains to this day the strongest () ever undertaken against intellectual property", coming close to abolishing patents.〔Johns, Adrian: ''Piracy. The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates''. The University of Chicago Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-226-40118-8, p.247〕 Its most prominent activists - Isambard Kingdom Brunel, William Robert Grove, William Armstrong and Robert A. MacFie - were inventors and entrepreneurs, and it was also supported by radical laissez-faire economists (The Economist published anti-patent views), law scholars, scientists (who were concerned that patents were obstructing research) and manufacturers.〔Johns, Adrian: ''Piracy'', p. 249, 267, 270〕 Johns summarizes some of their main arguments as follows:〔Johns, Adrian: ''Piracy'', p. 273, citing W.R. Grove: ''Suggestions for Improvements in the Administration of the Patent Law'', The Jurist n.s. 6 (January 28, 1860) 19-25 ((online copy ) at Google Books), and B. Sherman, L. Bently: ''The Making of Modern Intellectual Property Law'' (CUP 1999), 50-56〕 :''() projected an artificial idol of the single inventor, radically denigrated the role of the intellectual commons, and blocked a path to this commons for other citizens — citizens who were all, on this account, potential inventors too. () Patentees were the equivalent of squatters on public land — or better, of uncouth market traders who planted their barrows in the middle of the highway and barred the way of the people.'' Similar debates took place during that time in other European countries such as France, Prussia, Switzerland and the Netherlands (but not in the USA).〔Johns, Adrian: ''Piracy'', p. 248〕 Based on the criticism of patents as state-granted monopolies inconsistent with free trade, the Netherlands abolished patents in 1869 (having established them in 1817), and did not reintroduce them until 1912.〔Chang, Ha-Joon. ("Kicking Away the Ladder: How the Economic and Intellectual Histories of Capitalism Have Been Re-Written to Justify Neo-Liberal Capitalism" ). ''Post-Autistic Economics Review''. 4 September 2002: Issue 15, Article 3. Retrieved on 8 October 2008.〕 In Switzerland, criticism of patents delayed the introduction of patent laws until 1907.〔〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Societal views on patents」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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