“The analogy to intellectual property, although imperfect, should be clear. Ethanol credits, like patents and copyrights, are property. Unlike traditional forms of property (say, in land or chattels), they are property rights created by statute out of thin air in order to incentivize creation of a public good. More renewable fuels in the case of ethanol credits, more creative works and inventions in the case of IP. Creating new property rights can be a very healthy exercise and it’s generally preferable to government production of the public good. As the ethanol credits mess show us, though, getting right the design of the new property right is crucial, yet something regulators are bound to screw up for all the reasons that Hayek and Buchanan and Tullock pointed out. As I mentioned, the analogy is not perfect. Government requires that refiners buy ethanol credits, while there’s no such law about IP. And yet, if you think about software and process patents, it plausible to make a case that there might as well be a requirement. Given how broadly these patents are interpreted, you might find that you have to pay tribute to a patent holder to be in a particular line of business. This is why we have patent trolls.”

– http://jerrybrito.com/2013/09/15/ethanol-credits-intellectual-propoerty/