[Fsf-friends] [twnfeatures] CALL TO REFORM INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SYSTEM (fwd)

[Frederick Noronha (FN)]

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CALL TO REFORM INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SYSTEM

At a recent conference on the Future of the World Intellectual Property 
Organisation in Geneva, the system of patents, copyright and other intellectual 
property rights came under public attack for benefiting a minority at the 
expense of the majority.

By Martin Khor
Third World Network Features


 	The system of patents, copyright and other intellectual property rights 
is coming under public attack, including from famous scientists and well-known 
law professors, who say that this system has gone too far in benefiting a few 
people at the expense of the majority.

 	The critics are concerned and even angry that patents and copyright are 
given (mainly to companies in developed countries) too freely and on terms that 
unfairly penalise consumers, researchers and small producers.

 	The wide range of criticisms emerged at a conference on the Future of 
the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) organised by the 
Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue in Geneva in September.

 	Among the problems raised were that the intellectual property rights 
(IPR) system is hampering the free flow of information, raising the cost of 
computer software, hampering scientists from advancing research, reducing the 
public's access to information and raising the cost of medicines.

 	Among the participants were Sir John Suston, Nobel Prize winner and 
leader of the Cambridge-based scientific team that uncovered the human genome; 
Richard Stallman, a pioneer of the free software movement (which led among 
other things to the Linux operating system); and many academic professors 
specialising in IPR law.

 	Suston expressed concern that databases containing scientific 
information are increasingly placed under copyright, making it difficult and 
costly for researchers to have access, and thus impeding research.

 	He advocates that scientific data be placed in public databases which 
researchers can freely use. When he completed his work on mapping the human 
genome, Suston's team quickly published the results in a scientific journal, 
making it available to all.

 	'We put the details on a public database so everyone can have access 
and do their own research,' he said.

 	He spoke against the present practice of patenting of genes, which is 
an abuse of the patent system as the gene sequences are discoveries and not 
inventions. He described the attempt by European governments to tighten 
copyright on databases as 'absolutely retrograde'.

 	'We need ways to tame the market, and conduct research in ways that are 
not purely market driven,' he said. 'We need to restore trust, because I am 
afraid the human race will not survive if we don't restore trust between the 
scientists and science.'

 	Stallman, who is president of the Free Software Foundation, said that 
IPRs were a restriction on the public's access to information and essential 
goods, and should not be termed as 'rights'.

 	'Patents granted for software only benefit very few, who are given the 
chance to sue, whilst the rest are threatened with potential suits,' he said. 
'There are negative effects for software developers and computer users.'

 	Librarians, scholars and students are also worried that higher 
copyright regulations are preventing access to information.

 	Jukka Liedes of the Finland Education Ministry, who is in charge of the 
country's library system and access to information policy, said that in the 
past it was considered that 'the less there was IP or copyright, the better.'

 	However, at present consumers are constrained by copyright terms and 
access to information has become a concern, he said. The copyright system has 
effects on cultural diversity, cultural expressions and on the promotion of 
creativity.

 	For Volker Grassmuch of Humboldt University in Berlin, the digital 
revolution (sparked by the personal computer and the Internet) had made 
information, editing and copying available to many.

 	However, there was now a 'digital counter-revolution', through 
restrictions placed on computer users, for instance on what they are allowed to 
download. Moreover, he said, copyright law mainly benefits not the authors or 
musicians but the major industry owners. The consumers and small producers pay 
the price.

 	Several speakers stressed that they were not against intellectual 
property per se, but that there should be a balance between the monopoly 
privileges given to the patent or copyright holders, and the rights and welfare 
of the public.

 	Their concern was that the balance had tilted very much in favour of 
the IPR holders, which are able to jack up prices of their products, affecting 
consumers' access, whilst also preventing other producers from competing with 
them.

 	Dr R Sothi, director of Consumers' International's Asian office (based 
in Kuala Lumpur), said a study of copyright laws in five Asian countries had 
shown that the IP system is making educational materials inaccessible to the 
poor as it raised the cost and prevented copying. A one-size-fits-all system is 
unsuitable to treat countries at different stages of development.

 	The health organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres showed data on how 
medicines for AIDS patients had been maintained at high levels because of 
patents. It also exposed the fact that 97% of patents worldwide are held in the 
developed countries, whilst 80% of patents in the developing countries also 
belong to residents of the rich countries. Thus those who benefit from the IP 
system are overwhelmingly from the developed countries.

 	The patent system in the United States is being distorted by recent 
practices, according to several American academics. Brian Kahin of the 
University of Michigan said the standards for granting patents had been 
lowered, so many more patents are being granted.

 	He added that the range of products for which patents are granted has 
also expanded to include, for example, life forms, software and business 
methods. As a result, many patents that are given are of questionable validity.

 	The seminar participants were worried that the US model, which is 
unsuitable even for Americans, is now being exported to the developing 
countries, where it is even more inappropriate and will cause more harm.

 	They were referring firstly to the agreement on intellectual property 
in the World Trade Organisation, and secondly to the attempts by the developed 
countries to create new treaties in WIPO (such as the substantive patent law 
treaty and the broadcasters' rights treaty) that would 'harmonise' the 
developing countries' IPR laws with the laws of the US and other developed 
countries.

 	'This harmonisation attempt is immoral and the last insult to 
developing countries,' said Dr Graham Dutfield of Queen Mary's University in 
Britain. 'Japan would not have developed if it had these IPR laws, and the big 
companies of Europe could not have taken off if they were disallowed from 
copying technology.

 	'In the past the IP system allowed countries to catch up as it 
differentiated among countries, but now the harmonisation process will block 
developing countries from catching up.'

 	Well-known American academic Prof. Jerome Reichmann said that the 
proposed new WIPO treaties 'would transmit a dysfunctional US system of 
intellectual property to the rest of the world. It is utterly unfeasible to do 
that, and it is completely wrong.'

 	'Why should the developing countries participate in a standard setting 
exercise which would be bad for them and also bad for the US and EU,' he added. 
'How can any good come out of it and why should the developing countries accept 
it?' He called for a stop to such 'harmonisation' attempts, and this was 
supported by other participants.

 	The seminar also discussed many ideas for reforming WIPO so that it 
would not, as now, only promote IPRs but be able to consider IPRs within the 
broader context of development. A declaration on the future of WIPO to that 
effect is under preparation. - Third World Network Features.

                                                                     -ends-

About the writer: Martin Khor is Director of the Third World Network.

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