Thiru Balasubramaniam from the Consumer Project on Technology is at the general session of the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, and he's just posted his transcript of a barn-burner of a speech on IP and international development.
All members of WIPO need recognize that higher and higher levels of IP protection, inherent in any harmonization exercise that takes no account of the circumstances of each country, are extremely detrimental to developing countries. Intellectual property rights have to be viewed not as a self contained and distinct domain, but rather as an effective policy instrument for wide ranging socio-economic and technological development. The primary objective of this instrument is to maximize public welfare. The national policy space of each country must be respected, especially when developing countries are asked to assume international obligations. Even the most advanced developed countries, with their complex laws, have to grapple with the anti-competitive practices linked to patents. The absence of any comparable legal regime in developing countries means that these countries are required to grant monopoly rights to IP holders, without any meaningful or credible instruments to regulate the exercise of these rights.
Given the huge disparities existing across the world it is open to question whether IP harmonization benefits developing countries. The developed countries to pay lip service to "development' in the context of Intellectual Property protection, but they do so rather self-servingly. The term 'development' as used by these countries, including in WIPO, means quite the opposite of what developing countries understand when they refer to the 'development dimension'. If you share the perspective of the developed countries, 'development' means increasing a developing country's capacity to provide protection to the overwhelmingly developed country owners of IP rights!
