A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state or national government to an inventor or his/her assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for a public disclosure of an invention.
The procedure for granting patents, the requirements placed on the patentee, and the extent of the exclusive rights vary widely between countries according to national laws and international agreements.
Trademarks can act as a form of consumer protection that lowers the transaction costs between a buyer and seller who are not personally acquainted.
In the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, for example, the proprietary Macrovision copy prevention technology is required for analog video recorders.
[7] A natural monopoly occurs when a single company dominates the market by having the lowest prices or the products most in demand by consumers.
If the fixed costs associated with providing a service or product are very high, it may not make economic sense for new competitors to enter the market.
Some economists, such as Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Wayne Winegarden argue that price controls have disastrous economic effects or are otherwise immoral.
[10][11][12] Dennis Thompson notes, "Corruption is bad not because money and benefits change hands, and not because of the motives of participants, but because it privatizes valuable aspects of public life, bypassing processes of representation, debate, and choice.
"[13] Opponents of government-granted monopoly often point out that such a firm is able to set its pricing and production policies without fear of breeding potential competition.
argue that this causes inefficiencies in the market place, such as unnecessarily high prices to consumers for the good or service being supplied.