Early neoliberals widely saw patent reform as anti-monopoly competition policy

Evidence

The ideas of Plant and Polanyi were echoed in the work of neoliberals from the 1930s to the 1950s. As cited by Landes and Posner, Hayek singled out patents at the first meeting of the MPS as a case where state intervention was needed to encourage competition. Here he followed the leaders of the Freiburg School of ordoliberalism, Walter Eucken and Alexander Rüstow, who held a similar position on patents. In a book from 1942, Röpke cited Plant to write that “the modern patent system has developed into a weapon of the big against the small.” Like many after him, he advocated a shortened patent protection and compulsory licensing “which would permit everyone to make free use of the invention on payment of a fee.” The assumption that neoliberals were skeptics of IP was widespread from the 1940s to the 1960s. In 1952, later MPS president Herbert Giersch described “transformation of association and patent law” as one of the “instruments of competition policy … discussed in neoliberal circles.” An American article on “German neoliberalism” from 1960 identified patent-law reform as one of the pillars of their anti-monopolism, including shortening patent protection, preventing misuse of patent law, and generally including it as part of their anti-monopoly vision. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 181

Categorization

• XREF: Overturns the taken-for-granted conservative pro-IP stance of present-day libertarians - contradicts the crude characterization of all neoliberals as IP maximalists. — connects to: Neoliberal economists were not united behind aggressive intellectual property rights — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 165; Early MPS neoliberals favored weaker patent rights over stronger ones — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 183; Neoliberalism inverted classical liberalism by defending monopoly and corporate power — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 175 (+5 more)
• SEED: Seed for an essay on how the MPS’s early anti-patent skepticism was reversed and forgotten - a genealogy of IP maximalism.

Broader Connections

• Early MPS neoliberals favored weaker patent rights over stronger ones #corroborates (1.00) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 183
• Neoliberalism inverted classical liberalism by defending monopoly and corporate power #contradicts (1.00) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 175
• Securing competitive order sometimes led neoliberals to oppose property rights in ideas #corroborates (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 166
• Early neoliberals treated public regulation as a greater threat than private monopoly #complicates (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 744