Intellectual Piracy

Abstract

As a result of agreements setting up the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1994, trade diplomats have new responsibilities for resolving intellectual property disputes. The U.S. trade representative estimates that pirated and counterfeit products cause losses to U.S. industries of between $200 and $250 billion per year.1 The European Union has similar complaints. The problem is that residents of developing countries, such as China, Brazil, and India, and others—including some advanced countries—routinely misappropriate patents, copyrights, and trademarks without paying royalties. The world's entertainment industries—film, music, books, and software—claim such infringements cost them billions of dollars in lost revenue. Business groups assert that 36 percent of the world's software is pirated, and in countries such as Vietnam, China, and Ukraine, the piracy rate is said to exceed 90 percent. By comparison, the piracy rate is 23 percent in North America, and 36 percent in Western Europe.2 In this important and stimulating book Doron S. Ben-Atar, a diplomatic historian who teaches at Fordham University, argues that a similar pattern applied in the eighteenth century. At that time many of the pirates were Americans. During the years before and after independence, government officials, private citizens, and voluntary associations smuggled European inventions and enticed artisans to bring their technical knowledge across the Atlantic. Ben-Atar concludes that “most” of the elite of the early generation was involved in technology piracy—importing items from Europe and claiming the privileges of invention (p. xv). Indeed, he reminds readers that the term “Yankee” originated in the Dutch word for smuggler.