The New Yorker Tackles IPRs

This week's New Yorker has a fantastic brief on IP law and the new riders being attached to US bilateral "free trade" agreements. Broadly speaking, I'm all for free trade, but extra clauses in the recent spate of agreements stand to grossly distort trade and enforce US-EU notions of IP across the globe. While some level of IP protection is good policy and almost a requirement in today's networked world, consider the ideas expressed in this excerpt:

"History suggests that after a certain point tougher I.P. rules yield diminishing returns. Josh Lerner, a professor at Harvard Business School, looked at a hundred and fifty years of patenting, and found that strengthening patent laws had little effect on the number of innovations within a country. And, in the U.S., stronger patent protections for things like software have had little or no effect on the amount of innovation in the field. The benefits of stronger I.P. protection are even less convincing when it comes to copyright: there’s little evidence that writers and artists are made more productive or creative by the prospect of earning profits for seventy years after they die, and the historical record suggests only a tenuous connection between stronger I.P. laws and creative output.

The U.S., in its negotiations, insists on a one-size-fits-all approach: stronger rules are better. But accepting a diverse range of I.P. rules makes more sense, especially in light of the different economic challenges that developing and developed countries face. Lerner’s study found that the benefits of stronger patent laws were reduced in less developed countries. And developing countries, being poorer, obviously have more to gain from shorter patent terms for foreign innovations, since that facilitates the spread of new technology and the diffusion of ideas. Tellingly, this is the approach the U.S. takes when it comes to labor standards, arguing that we shouldn’t impose developed-country standards on developing countries. But in the case of intellectual property the government’s position is exactly the opposite. The only difference, it seems, is whose interests are at stake."

I couldn't have said it better myself. In one page, the author is able to capture the crux of my rambling 85 page thesis on global development and intellectual property rights. Quite eloquent--and more robust quantitative statistics to back it up as well!

This all comes at an interesting time in the global trade debate as experts and policy wonks are getting increasingly vocal about the legitimacy of these riders, from IP stipulations to labor regulations. Personally, I think we should carve out a sustainable path that builds in some of these mandates (labor standards, environmental standards) while eliminating the more restrictive and protectionist pieces. But politics doesn't work that way, does it?

Read the full article here:
Exporting I.P.: Financial Page: The New Yorker