Stronger Intellectual Property Rights Protection Research Articles

When Two Worlds Collide: Ownership of Genetic Resources unde rthe Convention on Biological Diversity and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

The rapid growth of the biotechnology industry over the past two decades led many countries to recognize the vast economic potential of their genetic resources and indigenous knowledge. 1 Pharmaceutical companies and plant breeders increasingly rely upon these resources to engineer plantderived drugs, disease-resistant crops, and biotechnical production processes.2 With increasing demand for new biotechnological products, the global community is struggling to strike a balance between the interests of host countries, who seek remuneration for supplying genetic resources and traditional knowledge, and biotechnological inventors, who are pressing for free access, open markets, and stronger intellectual property rights protection.

The multifaceted evolution of Korean technological capabilities and its implications for contemporary policy

This paper is a contribution to the ongoing debate on the impact and relevance of intellectual property to development. It confirms the finding of recent studies: the effects of intellectual property rights (IPRs) on technology transfer will vary by levels of economic development. The Korean experience offers four lessons. First, strong IPR protection will hinder rather than facilitate technology transfer and indigenous learning in the early stage of industrialization when learning takes place through reverse engineering and duplicative imitation of mature foreign products. Second, only after countries have accumulated sufficient indigenous capabilities with extensive science and technology infrastructure to undertake creative imitation IPR protection becomes an important element in technology transfer and industrial activities. Third, if adequate protection and enforcement of IPRs is genuinely intended to enhance development, policy-makers should seriously consider differentiation in terms of the level of economic development and industrial sectors. Fourth, developing countries should co-operate to change current trends towards a standardized all-encompassing multilateral IPR system. They should strive to make IPR policies more favourable to them in the short term. But they should also strengthen their own absorptive capacity for a long-term solution.

Intellectual property rights and foreign direct investment

This paper develops a product cycle model with endogenous innovation, imitation, and foreign direct investment (FDI). We use this model to determine how stronger intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in the South affects innovation, imitation and FDI. We find that stronger IPR protection keeps multinationals safer from imitation, but no more so than Northern firms. Instead, the increased difficulty of imitation generates resource wasting and imitation disincentive effects that reduce both FDI and innovation. The greater resources absorbed in imitation crowd out FDI. Reduced FDI then transmits resource scarcity in the South back to the North and consequently contracts innovation.

Intellectual Property: A Universal Human Right?

Intellectual Property: A Universal Human Right? Robert L. Ostergard* Jr. (bio) I. Introduction Given the ever-widening acceptance of a right to protection of intellectual property (IP), one might assume that there is at least implicitly an equally broad and agreed upon rationale or justification for this right. This, however, is not the case. Among those who write on the subject, there are two dominant, and not at all consistent, lines of reasoning. John Locke’s labor theory of property, one of the foundations of traditional property rights in the modern world, is a logical starting point for attempts to justify intellectual property rights (IPR), that is, the protection of exclusive ownership in intangible objects that acquire their value mainly from creative efforts.1 The second justification for IPR is derived from a traditional doctrine of [End Page 156] utilitarian inference, whereby the right to property is granted based on maximizing the benefits society can obtain.2 Although there are zones of overlap between these two lines of reasoning, even if they are taken together and their zones of disagreement ignored, they do not constitute an adequate or coherent prescriptive theory for the recognition of IP rights. Without a logical foundation for justifying IPR, their consideration as a basic human right seems untenable. Thus, this article presents an alternative argument for the justification of IPR and its manifestation as a human right. Although it is clear that the most frequently offered justifications for a right to IP are anchored in relatively modern theoretical arguments, there are substantially older historical precedents for this policy. Intellectual property issues date to the Chinese Zhou dynasty (1122 BC), when concern arose for commodity identification.3 By AD 835, the Wenzong Emperor barred the unauthorized reproduction of documents, calendars, and other items related to prognostication.4 In the Western world, IPR in the form of patents came into existence around 1500 in Venice and spread to most of the major European powers by 1550, 5 more than a century before John Locke’s work on private property. Gradually, governments recognized rights that owners had to their ideas. Subsequently, states adapted IPR to accommodate the increasingly expansive growth of technological innovations. In the modern era, the claim to IPR has evolved from a state-granted right to a universal human right without substantial scrutiny. This article proposes an alternative view of IPR protection: that not all IPR should be justified. Because the state’s responsibility to provide for people’s physical welfare takes precedence over an individual’s right to profit, the article makes two explicit arguments. The first is that there exists a hierarchy of intellectual objects based on a generally perceived notion of physical welfare. The second is that when discussing IPR, the emphasis must not be exclusively on the rights of producers; IPR must also be examined from the perspective of consumers and the national welfare. Both of these arguments focus on nations’ attempts to fulfill their citizens’ basic needs, which are largely grounded in technologies and processes that [End Page 157] sustain physical well-being. Consequently, if certain individuals have exclusive control of established technologies, other individuals may be deprived of basic products that could contribute to their betterment. Before elaborating on the arguments outlined above, this article explores the differences between traditional property and IP, as well as the two traditional theories used to justify IP rights. The article also considers the role that IP plays in contributing to people’s welfare, and concludes with an examination of the conflict that exists between developed countries that favor strong universal IPR protection, and the developing countries that favor greater access to technologies for all nations based on human rights considerations. II. Property Rights and Intellectual Property Theory Property, in one form or another, has been a concern in many of history’s struggles for fundamental rights. The Magna Carta (1215), 6 the US Declaration of Independence (1776), 7 the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789), 8 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) 9 all recognize property rights in some form. Generally, this right to property refers to tangible items, such as land, business establishments, housing, and...

International intellectual property rights protection and the rate of product innovation

Using a dynamic general equilibrium model of the international product cycle we found that the effects of strengthening intellectual property rights protection (IPP) in South depend cricially on the channel of production transfer from North to South. Stronger IPP in South increases the rate of product innovation, production transfer and Southern relative wage if foreign direct investment is the channel of production transfer, but has opposite effects if production is transferred through imitation. Stronger IPP can be more broadly interpreted as any incentive given by South to encourage Northern FDI.