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The Burden of Intellectual Property Rights On Clean Energy Technologies
Lasrick writes If climate change is to be addressed effectively in the long run, nations of all descriptions must pursue mitigation and adaptation strategies. But poor countries face a potential hurdle when it comes to clean-energy technologies—most of the relevant intellectual property is held in the rich world. Many observers argue that it's unfair and unrealistic to expect massive energy transformations in the developing world unless special allowances are made. Yet intellectual property rights are intended in part to spur the very innovation on which climate mitigation depends. This article is the first post in a roundtable that debates this question: In developing countries, how great an impediment to the growth of low-carbon energy systems does the global intellectual property rights regime represent, and how could the burdens for poor countries be reduced?
Is anybody even pretending that patents exist anymore for anything other than lining corporate and lawyer pockets? Just tell them to piss off because the planet is more important.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I read the summary and thought "wow, this is really stupid". Then I read the article......and confirmed that thought.
A bunch of generalizations and false arguments....."Defenders of intellectual property rights argue that....". No, they don't necessarily make those arguments.
The early United States ignored patents issued abroad once upon a time...
Given that China, the US and the EU are together responsible for more than 50% of the worldwide CO2 emissions, I would expect that the Intellectual Property to combat climate change is right where it is needed. Saying that taking action against climate change is hurdled by poor countries not having the intellectual rights to the necessary technology silently suggests that poor countries are part of the climate change problem, which is absolutely not true.
I've heard a lot of lame excuses on why nothing is being done concerning climate change, but whoever thought of this one deserves a cookie.
If intellectual property is indeed property, I believe it is about time we tax whoever owns it like any other valuable property.
The title of this post refers to "intellectual property". There is no such thing. There are patents, copyrights, and trademarks. But none of these is property. If they were we would not need a special part of the US Constitution to deal with these things (Article 1, Section 8). Because none of this is "property" it is not covered by property law.
And that's the problem. Patents, copyrights, and trademarks exist to further innovation. They represent a monopoly limited in time and held by the innovator who created the thing that is patentable, copyrightable, or tradmarkable. But when we treat those temporary monopolies as property that can be bought and sold, inherited and used as collateral, we have destroyed the impetus to innovation and replaced it with an impetus to profit even at the peril of innovation.
And so we have the ridiculous spectacle of a copyright extended and extended ... even beyond the lifetime of the innovator. How does a copyright encourage creativity in a dead person? The solution to all of this is simply to return to the original short terms of these monopolies and not to allow property law, buying and selling of rights, to insert it's corrupting hand into the crucible of creativity.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
What we really need to do is sit down and talk about whether we merely need to stop abuses of the patent system, or need to scrap it altogether and in the meantime do what we can to stop the most egregous abuses of the system. We also need to sit down and have the same talk about the economic system in general.
http://www.theguardian.com/new...
Excellent. Your property has caused injury to me and many others, now that the owner has been identified you can expect a class action lawsuit.
I don't read AC A human right
Because that is what it really is. Intellectual Monopoly is not compatible with property rights. You either own your property and are free to transform it and sell it or you don't own it. Someone saying I can't configure my property is only possible with a government granted monopoly and has no basis in property rights.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
"in many developing countries, there is strong suspicion that the TRIPS Agreement is a component of a policy of technological protectionism intended at consolidating an international division of labor where the industrialized nations generate innovations and developing countries are the market for the resulting products ."
The Global Politics of Intellectual Property Rights and Pharmaceutical Drug Policies in Developing Countries
What we really need to do is sit down and talk about whether we merely need to stop abuses of the patent system, or need to scrap it altogether and in the meantime do what we can to stop the most egregous abuses of the system.
I disagree. Historically, our patent system worked very well. The vast majority of patent abuse and trolling has been relatively recent, and in fact was nowhere near this level 20 years ago. The problems have gone hand-in-hand with the recent crony capitalism and government revolving doors. That is, I suspect they share the same root causes.
When something works pretty much fine for 200 years, then doesn't work good for 20 years, it isn't very helpful to ask what's wrong with the system that worked RIGHT for all that time. Rather, the thing to do is ask what went WRONG in recent years.
Hint: it wasn't "the system". The system is pretty much the same as it has always been.