It has the virtue of being entirely decentralised and of incorporating an automatic feedback mechanism: the owner decides how to use the object and is informed on the quality of the choice made by the returns or losses flowing from such use. [...] Besides the danger of consumers free riding, one must also expect competitors to copy the good and bring to market a lower-priced version of it competing with the original, thus undermining the client base of the original creator. [...] To illustrate what this means, consider Diagram 2. Diagram 2 Optimistic and pessimistic views of the relationship between the strength of intellectual property and the increase of general welfare (as mediated by the level of innovation). [...] In different work, Moser looked at the stimulating role of patents.12 She studied world trade fairs between 1851 and 1915: the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London in 1851, the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. [...] The essential point of these is that what the consumer buys is not so much the recipe of a chef, as the total experience of consuming the dish in the restaurant where the chef prepares it or supervises its preparation.