wow!! It sure has been a long long time since I updated my blog. Neither am I adding anything substantial here. My first night-out of 2009 is spent writing a paper on the topic aforementioned, firstly in MS word, and then making its hard copy. A 1000+ word paper to be written on a topic I've barely been introduced to was nothing short of torture on a winter night. Almost the pangs you get when you hurt yourself out in such a weather. Written in the haste I was, the paper did get wordy and you might find ideas repeated. Actually, I guess you are better off not going through it at all. Oh! and don't you complain about the conclusion. In fact, don't bother complaining about anything .. these are no better than what a new born child could tell you about a cow :D
Intellectual property law, by definition, grants the holder legal rights of exclusivity over intangible assets, viz. literary works, musical compositions, commercial symbols, scientific inventions and technological break-through. The IP regime is broadly classified into four stays – patents, trade marks, copyright and design. The IP regime gives complete exclusivity rights to the owner, that is, the owner has statutory backing for his work and can seek legal action in case he feels someone else took unlawful advantage of the work without giving due credit to him. This, in another way, gives the creator of the work a monopolistic right on the product.
No doubt that we are moving towards a world which is becoming increasingly knowledge-based, and hence IP laws would only gain considerable importance. But, how far could we justify its monopolistic nature is up for a debate.
At present, the laws seem too formalistic and certainly need to be revamped for better results. Every product/creation needs to have a specific treatment. The regime presently grants the owner complete rights over the creation for a time period irrespective of its implications. This actually is quite the right thing to do if we chose to ignore socio-economic conditions in most cases.
Let’s understand the situation with an example. Say an individual Mr. X succeeds in developing an effective medication for a deadly disease such as tuberculosis. Now, given the cost incurred by X (who in this particular case could also refer to pharmaceutical companies) in research and development of the cure should definitely be allowed a right over the medication. This would mean X should be able to gain substantial profits from the product, thereby justifying the investment he put in during the initial stages. Now, the IP regime gives X an exclusive right over the cure and it now completely depends upon X as to how he chooses to market the medicine and what price he charges. In other words, it provides X with monopolistic rights over the product. This very idea of X having the sole right over the economics of the medication fails fundamentally when X tries to maximize benefits out of it. In the process, the price tag of the medication would undoubtedly become very high, maybe even out of the reach of common man. To put it differently, in a more grim perspective, it would mean that the richer section of the society would unjustly get more right to life than their poorer counterparts. A situation would thus be created which would definitely be unwanted, but inevitable due to the set of laws in place.
Where was X wrong in this? Nowhere, I suppose, given the fact that the world thrives on just one mantra – ‘my profit’. In fact, if there wasn’t this incentive for X to discover a cure, he might as well not have gone on to do so. Apart from this, if X is a company, it would need to constantly endeavor to stay a step ahead than its competitors. This would lead to further monopolizing of the whole sector as only X would have the knowledge to prepare the medication which it wouldn’t share with others. IP laws would ensure that X could not be forced or coerced in any way to divulge what he has learned. In many cases X might resort to business malpractices such as reducing the supply of product (which is in good demand) it has right over and thus controlling the price structure in an unlawful manner. The monopolistic nature of IP regime proves to be a bane under such circumstances. The situation would be much more precarious if it so happens that a foreign company has the rights over the medication/product and it has to do business in India (for example). In such a case, the company would work with ‘maximum profit’ as the single most important agenda of business completely ignoring social responsibilities. Certainly, measures could be taken to subdue the effect – like government subsidy (in case of life-saving drugs and essential commodities) and by making sure such products are licensed by the government to ensure overpricing does not take place. But again, such steps are specific and would vary from product to product. Unless such a law is not in place which specifically deals with each and every product separately, the monopolistic nature of IP regime would continue to hurt in the ways mentioned.
The assumption that innovation is the sole prerogative of a lone conceiver and copyright norms are the preserve of authors and writers who have tie-ups with huge publishing houses disconcerts us in more ways than one. Another example could be found in the world characterized by computers – software and hardware. There was a time a decade back when a proprietary model existed in the industry with just one or two giant corporations doing all the coding and placing products in the market at monopoly prices. With the advent of Web 2.0, open-source movement swept the world in a manner which wasn’t ever imagined. A network of programmers brought to us highly innovative and free software products giving competition to the giant software companies. In fact, in many cases, the open-source freeware these programmers make are literally far better than those offered by organizations where people work in lieu of huge monetary incentives. User-generated content are posted at breath-taking speeds in social networking websites like Orkut and uploading websites like YouTube and FlixSter. Torrent websites and other file-sharing forums like RapidShare have allowed for mass-scale sharing of knowledge as well as other contents like works of art. Blogs have completely changed the definition of sharing literary content. These are things which continue to contribute in growth of the society as a whole in ways which can’t be achieved by the monopolistic disposition of IP regime. Just imagine what would happen if suddenly all that information which is available at our fingertips when we connect to the internet vanishes because everyone wants to keep his or her work monopolized.
The monopolistic nature of IP regime certainly is a boon to individuals who need their rights to their work protected. It also promotes innovation because of the incentives attached with success. But, it needs to be reconsidered so that it could be more relevant to the changing scenario.
P.S. I used a couple of websites as my source of information, the links to which I conveniently forgot. I apologize ( **yawn** ) for that
Forever Is A Lie
7 years ago
