Earlier this week at the UN World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), there was a meeting to talk about how to reform the org to make it into a humanitarian agency that promotes development, not monopoly rights for publishing and pharmaceutical companies.
India's statement from the floor was so good it should be taught in universities. Check it out:
The real "development" imperative is ensuring that the interest of
Intellectual Property owners is not secured at the expense of the users
of IP, of consumers at large, and of public policy in general. The
proposal therefore seeks to incorporate int international IP law and
practice, what developing countries have been demanding since TRIPS was
forced on them in 1994.The primary rationale for Intellectual Property protection is, first and
foremost, to promote societal development by encouraging technological
innovation. The legal monopoly granted to IP owners is an exceptional
departure from the general principle of competitive markets as the best
guarantee for securing the interest of society. The rationale for the
exception is not that extraction of monopoly profits by the innovator
is, of and in itself, good for society and so needs to be promoted.
Rather, that properly controlled, such a monopoly, by providing an
incentive for innovation, might produce sufficient benefits for society
to compensate for the immediate loss to consumers as a result of the
existence of a monopoly market instead of a competitive market. Monopoly
rights, then, granted to IP holders is a special incentive that needs to
be carefully calibrated by each country, in the light of its own
circumstances, taking into account the overall costs and benefits of
such protection.
