Posts Tagged ‘patents’

My favorite class this year was about the rise of China and India as international powers. It was taught by a former World Bank economist who has done much of the work on these two countries’ “knowledge economies.” My term paper examined intellectual property in China and India.

Although many objective observers see stronger intellectual property rights as an amenable, even necessary, policy for China and India, there are significant downsides to increasing IPR protection and enforcement. Strengthened IPR is likely to disproportionately advantage the developed world, decrease the ability of China and India to diffuse productivity-enhancing innovations, prove both insufficient and unnecessary for promoting innovation, and even be counterproductive to the countries’ innovation systems.

Here’s the entire paper. (Also available for download here.)
There Is No Harmony In a Patent Thicket: Towards an Effective IPR Regime in China and India

Tim Lee, who blogs at the great group blog the Technology Liberation Front, has a review of James Bessen and Michael Meurer’s new book, “Patent Failure.” The conclusions:

• For large, publicly traded firms, patent portfolios are net losers. To defend a corporation’s patents typically costs more for non-pharmaceutical patents than the intellectual property makes.
• This disincentive for innovation has risen sharply since the 1990s when courts loosened restrictions on patent granting and litigation.
• Patents suffer from the lack of notice they offer. It often isn’t clear until costly litigation occurs what the patent covers (in contrast to both real property and trademarks and copyrights).
• A number of proposed fixes could help the excruciatingly complicated task of reforming the patent system including raising patent fees, increasing stringency of granting patents, providing a safe-harbor for good-faith, accidental infringement and ending software patents.

Secondly, via White African, a New York Times article on the Kenya technology scene provides a glimpse into the burgeoning technical industries in Africa. Although the article develops into a discussion about Google opening an office in Nairobi, it provides an insightful look at the ingenuity which is required to innovate in a city where Internet is slow and expensive, people cannot afford the most advanced gadgets and mobile phones are the primary means of connection.

[Photo via NYT]