[Fsf-friends] COMMENT: India's amazing statement on IP and international development (fwd)

Frederick Noronha (FN) fred@bytesforall.org
Sat Apr 16 02:11:55 IST 2005


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http://www.boingboing.net/2005/04/15/indias_amazing_state.html

Friday, April 15, 2005
India's amazing statement on IP and international development
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.
Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:52:49 AM permalink | Other blogs commenting on 
this post

[Thanks to Sandip B for pointing this out on the India-GII list earlier.]



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