This may be of interest to many of you.
Tom
Subj: Cornerhouse briefing, "Who Owns the Knowledge Economy"
Date: 12/3/2004 6:01:43 PM Central Standard Time
From: [log in to unmask] (Jim Diamond)
Sender: [log in to unmask] (Biotech Forum)
Reply-to: <A HREF="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]</A> (Biotech Forum)
To: [log in to unmask]
I'm forwarding this intact. I'm sure the full CornerHouse briefing is
available online. What the statement below delicately calls "a failure of
democratic process" could, less delicately, be called imperialism. Privileged groups
in privileged nations set up rules which obligate most of the world to pay
patent royalties for "intellectual property" which includes medical advances and
also genetically engineered organisms. This puts the less developed world
even deeper in the hole.
Jim Diamond, M.D.
Genetic Engineering Committee
-=-=-=-=-
"Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?
Political Organising Behind TRIPS"
by Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite
Corner House Briefing Paper 32
<A HREF=">">http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk</A>
Ten years ago this year, TRIPS -- the World Trade Organisation's agreement on
Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights -- was signed by more
than 100 government ministers.
TRIPS was the most important agreement on intellectual property of the 20th
century. It revolutionised the way that property rights in information were
defined and enforced, and effectively globalised its intellectual property
principles, because most countries are members of (or are seeking membership of) the
World Trade Organisation.
Yet during the 1980s, almost everyone in the business and trade community
thought TRIPS was a bad idea. It was against the interests of almost everyone
except a few software, pharmaceutical, chemical and entertainment companies in
the US and, to a lesser extent, in Europe and Japan.
It was also a pipe dream. It seemed completely implausible that an agreement
to expand monopoly rights could be put into a regime that was about
dismantling trade monopolies and removing barriers to competition.
So why did more than 100 states that had little to gain by agreeing to these
terms of trade for intellectual property -- terms that offered a few countries
so much protection -- sign up to TRIPS?
Because of a failure of democratic processes, both nationally and
internationally.
This failure enabled a small group of men within the United States to capture
the US trade-agenda-setting process and then, in partnership with European
and Japanese multinationals, to draft intellectual property principles that
became the blueprint for TRIPS. The resistance of other countries was crushed
through US trade power.
This is the conclusion of Australian researchers Peter Drahos and John
Braithwaite. They interviewed over 500 key informants because "many of the
regulatory standards that have a global reach in our world are shaped by informal
negotiations of which no written record is made."
Their research, summarised in this latest Corner House briefing paper,
reveals "what the formal language of international intellectual property agreements
does not: the informal dynamic of power that determines the choice of words,
their meaning and subsequent utilization".
TRIPS was possible only because an elite in the US, Japan and Europe set
aside their differences and united around global intellectual property protection.
Resisting this new paradigm requires diverse groups and communities to unite
in a global politics that forces governments to design intellectual property
rights to serve the welfare and basic freedoms of citizens.
It also requires understanding the long-term organising strategies of a few
business visionaries in order to challenge current attempts to increase and
extend intellectual property rights, to halt widening inequalities, and to
redefine TRIPS as a matter of injustice.
Corner House Briefing 32
"Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?
Political Organising Behind TRIPS"
by Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite
is now on The Corner House website in html and PDF formats,
<A HREF=">">http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk</A>
Please contact us <<A HREF=">">[log in to unmask]</A>> if you
would like to receive a 32-page printed paper copy.
best regards
Sarah Sexton/Larry Lohmann/Nicholas Hildyard/Susan Hawley
The Corner House
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