Issues Around Intellectual Property Rights

Intellectual property rights (IPR) are extremely boring. This is a simple truth. There is nothing exciting about discussing copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets. There is no such thing as an invigorating discussion revolving around the legal battles of Isaac Newton v. Gottfried Wilhelm. It just doesn’t happen. What does happen, however, are “invigorating discussions” revolving around sites like Limewire and megashare being shut down. A woman who was sued for illegally downloading ten songs was found guilty and forced to pay a fee of $10,000.

There is this issues when it comes to IPR, this illusion that there are only two sides of a fence to stand on regarding how beneficial or detrimental IPR is in today’s society. Some people decide that IPR protects people from having their ideas stolen, promotes a healthy flow of inventions and discoveries for monetary gain, and in turn produce a flourishing, healthy economy. Other people feel that IPR advocates monopolies, encourages lawsuits, hurts “the little guy”, and ultimately crushes creativity, leaving little left to gain unless you are already a large and successful company.

Intellectual property rights are not perfect. IPR was put into effect at least as far back as 1867 (source). The laws have been morphed, mended, updated, and re-done ever since. The issue, is that there are issues not being discussed. Medicinal patents on AIDS/HIV medicine make it too expensive for many developing countries, those most in need of the medicine, to purchase it. Countries like Brazil struggle to provide children’s Tylenol to its citizens (source). Bosnia bittorrents Microsoft Word in its government offices because it can’t afford it. The real issue here seems to be why intellectual prop...

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...ers, generates solutions to global challenges, and encourages innovation in order to reward entrepreneurs. The Intellectual Property industry helps to employ over 55 million Americans, and

NEGATIVE IMPLICATIONS Governments of some developing countries often express doubts about introducing strong international Intellectual Property Rights and legislation into their framework. Most developing countries will most often base their scientific research and economy on the employment of foreign basic technology imported from industrialized countries. Both of these areas can be negatively affected by IP protection that is too strong. Developed countries often don’t take into account that while strict regulations of Intellectual Property is, at times, necessary to protect copyright holders, that the same strict IP laws limit how developing countries can interact with them.