Intellectual Property Rights:

Intellectual Property Rights:

1. What are IPRS?

   • property rights concern use and disposal of property
   • these rights have been extended to invention, creative works and life forms

2. 2 views on IPRs and development:

   • Liberal/modernisation view:
     • property rights are fundamental to the market economy, link invention effort and reward promoting development. International protection of IPRs is essential condition for rapid technological growth in the world economy
   • Dependency/World System Theory:
     • IPRs continue the dependency of the periphery on the core. developing countries continue their historic role of being suppliers.exporters of raw material for accumulation wealth in the developed countries. IPR is a tool of new forms of corporate colonialism. Biopiracy E.g. WR Grace 1914 (Neem tree), Rice Tech 1998 (Basmati Rice), Marisanti 2005 (wheat)

3. Biopiracy: concentrate in patents in genes, seeds and plants. Gene Rush since 1990s. commodification of nature, charge indigenous farmers for seeds and plants which were once free. where indigenous knowledge of nature is exploited for profit without permission or compensation

4. Shiva 'Biopiracy':

   • 3 problems with patenting life forms:
     • ethical= rethink claims that life forms were created by TNCs. What is being engineered? shared commons?
     • criminalisation of farmers saving and sharing seeds
     • encouraging biopiracy

5. IPR hurts the south in 4 ways:

   • deprives developing countries, especially farmers, of their age old common intellectual resources
   • creates market monopolies and superprofits and excludes original innovators from access to markets
   • erodes livelihood of small producers and prevents the poor from using their own resources and knowledge to meet their basic needs of health and nutrition
   • royalties have to be paid, increasing the debt burden

6. emergence of bioprospecting contracts:

   • between researchers and countries= lay down the rules about benefit shating and may generate royalties for developing countries. fairness of such contracts is debate-able, difficult to monitor. new form of biopiracy?

7. Drahos and Mayne:

   • developed countries set IPRs to suit theor own stage of economic development. the purpose of creating IPRs is to provide an incentive for producers to invest in the production of information by giving them a means of preventing free riding.

8. Stuart MAcdonald

   • complications and implications of the system pass virtually unnoticed in the world at large, masked by simple assumption that the patent stimulates innovation. patent only affords protection when the patentee can afford to enforce his or her rights, which mean that the poor have no protection at all. patent system is ripe for abuse. the strong are most able to exploit the patent. Patent system is essentially anti-innovative- assists a very specialised sort of innovation and discourages other sorts