Patents and Copyrights are Trade Barriers

Eduardo Porter used his weekly column to chronicle Brazil's economic course over the last two decades. He argues that many of its current problems are due to excessive government involvement in the economy in imposing price controls and trade barriers.

While there is likely some truth to this argument, it is worth extending Porter's warning to patent and copyright protection. These forms of protection are equivalent to tariffs of many thousand percent, they typically raise the price of protec...