A New Threat to Intellectual Property

Newsday ^ | June 16, 2005 | James P. Pinkerton

[XHogPilot]

GENEVA - Most Americans have probably never heard of the World Intellectual Property Organization, headquartered here in Switzerland.

Intellectual property is intangible property, such as software or music. Its value is very real. According to a study by Leonard Nakamura, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the total value of intellectual property in the United States is more than $5 trillion. That's more than a third of the value of the U.S. stock markets. Protected only by copyrights and patents, it is relatively easy to steal or counterfeit. (snip)

WIPO and other international bodies are meeting to consider new rules that would dramatically raise the cost for biotech companies "prospecting" (snip) compounds in plants and animals that can contribute to human healing. The stakes are not small. A single flower, the Madagascar periwinkle, has led to two potent cancer treatments, vincristine and vinblastine.

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? (snip) Western science succeeded, for example, in eradicating the age-old scourge of smallpox in 1977 - not a single case since. So an estimated 20 million lives have been saved these past three decades. (snip)

Well, anybody who thinks that should come to Geneva(snip). A group of 17 Third World countries, the so-called Like-Minded Megadiverse Countries (LMMC), are gathered here to figure out how to twist the rules concerning intellectual property. Their goal? To impose additional costs and potentially ruinous liabilities on Western biotech companies, most of them American. (snip)

The dollars in question are real. A study by the Pacific Research Institute finds that the proposed new regulations would cost biotech companies $144 billion (snip)

Even more dire would be the loss to public health: the study suggests that between 150 and 200 new drugs would never make it to the market under the proposed LMMC strictures.

(snip)

[XHogPilot]

A review of the US Constitution reveals the seeming oddity of discussing the US Patent Office. Its no oddity, it is a recognition of the value of Intellectual Property (IP), not just Real Property, as a fundamental contributor to commerce, our nations prosperity, and most importantly, the advancements of mankind.

[proxy_user]

This has two elements:

1. Protection of inventions and ideas.
2. For a limited time.

These two elements in combination allow us to reward innovators, but at the same time allow society as a whole to benefit from their innovations.

Given the pace of technological change nowadays, it would probably be logical to use shorter rather than longer time periods.

[phoenix0468]

Why do you say that? I think those who do the innovating should be rewarded for as long as they are alive. In many cases, with technological innovations today, those innovations could very well be obsolete before the patent expires anyway.

[proxy_user]

They will be obsolete in five years.

But they could be used by someone else to create an even better technology when the five years is up.

That is my logic. The inventor gets all the commercial value, but when that has dried up, the invention is tossed into the pot to create more inventions.

[The_Reader_David]

"To artists, authors and inventors for a limited time", is, I believe the language.

So on what basis is there a law which allows Henry Holt and Co. to prevent anyone form using Robert Frost's Fire and Ice a lyrics to a song over 80 years after it was written and over 30 years after the author's death?

On what constitutional basis can an artless hack prevent Martha Graham's dances from being performed after her death?

American intellectual property law has become an impediment to the arts and sciences, as it secures to commercial interests without a shred of artistic or scientific ability exclusive rights to authors and inventors works for an almost unlimited term. Internationalizing the same corruption would be worse.

[expat_panama]

I think those who do the innovating should be rewarded for as long as they are alive.

Fine, as long as we set a limit like the constitution requires.  My pick is 25 years but maybe we can vote on it.  US trial lawyers like limits they can extend anytime they want-- which IMHO are no limits at all.  They copyright movies, photos, books, as old as they want--no regard to a concept of 'public domain'.

Then again, the trial lawyers even try to tell us that the laws themselves are copyrighted.

[JoeFromSidney]

Fine, as long as we set a limit like the constitution requires. My pick is 25 years but maybe we can vote on it.

Some years ago economist William Nordhaus published a study of the optimum length for a patent. On the one hand, the longer the life of a patent, the greater incentive to invent. On the other hand, the longer the life of a patent, the more the public pays in royalties (a "loss" to the public). His conclusion was that the 17-year life of American patents was "about right." Any longer and you don't get much additional innovation, any shorter and you lose more in reduced innovation than you gain in reduced royalties.

Conditions may have changed since then, but probably not all that much. There have always been short-lived innovations (remember the hula hoop?) and there have always been innovations that were expensive to bring to market, which therefore require a long patent life, like pharmaceuticals.

[expat_panama]

Well stated-- there is a lot there.  Fortunately, laws and technology are like weather in the tropics.  Don't like it? --wait an hour.