Some history of the current state of international intellectual property law, or, what Bono and Bob Geldof have been going on about. by risa
In 1883, eleven countries, nervously preparing to participate in the Paris Exposition, signed the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property.
The provisions of the convention were revised and solidified by new acts in 1925, 1934, 1958, and 1967- before developing countries belonged in large numbers.
As of January 1, 1986, 97 states were parties to the convention. 64 of the newest members of the Paris Union were developing countries.
Patent protection and broad guidelines for national legislation reflect the 3 principles of the convention, all of which sound well and good when you are in the mindset of an inventor in America, but which take on unexpected crushing weight when put into practice in the developing world. (At least I choose to idealistically assume these unfolding effects were unexpected). Anyway, back to the 3 principles:
1. nondiscrimination: there should be no barriers of entry for foreign patent holders in a member state’s national market.
2. national treatment: once a foreign patent holder has entered a member state’s national market they are to be treated no differently than a national patent holder.
3. the right of priority: protects the patent holder from unauthorized use of their invention for a designated time period; a patent provides the holder with a temporary monopoly.
And here are the main problems with this set up as argued by Constantine Vaitsos- head of the Andean Pact Secretatiat’s policies on foreign investment and technology.
1. patents granted by developing countries are overwhelmingly held by foreigners (usually foreign multinationals)
2. the main function of patents granted in developing countries is to assist profit maximization of large transnational corporations.
3. patents become a substitute for foreign investment and are a means to capture developing countries markets.
4. patents are often the vehicle for the acquisition of local enterprises.
5. patents are a means for restricting the flow of technology from North to South.
6. patents can be a serious source of restrictive business practices.
He emphasized the point that patents often amounted to monopoly priviledges, and developing countries (through their patent laws) granted monopoly priviledges while getting absolutely nothing in return except for stunted growth and balance of payment problems.
Source: Sell, Susan K. Power and Ideas. north South Politics of Intellectual Property and Antitrust. New York: State University of New York Press, 1998.
In the face of frustration and resistance from developing countries the US took steps to further regulate and enforce the patent protection basis for international trade, and the IMF and World Bank collaborted by insisting that applicants for financial loans/aid first shape their trade law into compliant formulas.
But that’s a story for another article.
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