Knowledge Governance: Reasserting the Public Interest (The Anthem Other Canon Series) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857285351 ISBN 13: 9780857285355

Verlag: Anthem Press, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

This book argues that the current international intellectual property rights regime, led by the World Trade Organization (WTO), has evolved over the past three decades toward overemphasizing private interests and seriously hampering public interests in access to knowledge and innovation diffusion. This approach concentrates on tangible and codified knowledge creation and diffusion in research and development (R&D) that can be protected via patents and other intellectual property rules and regulations. In terms of global policy initiatives, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that the WTO in particular is mostly a conflict-resolution facility rather than a global governance body able to generate cooperation and steer international coordinated policy action. At the same time, rent extraction and profits streaming from legal hyperprotection have become pervasively important for firm strategies to compete in a globalized marketplace. “Knowledge Governance: Reasserting the Public Interest” offers a novel approach – knowledge governance – in order to move beyond the current regime.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Leonardo Burlamaqui is Program Officer at the Ford Foundation (New York and Rio de Janeiro) and Associate Professor of Political Economy at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Ana Célia Castro is Professor at the Institute of Economics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Rainer Kattel is Professor of Innovation Policy and Technology Governance and head of the Department of Public Administration at the Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia.

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Knowledge Governance

Reasserting the Public Interest

By Leonardo Burlamaqui, Ana Célia Castro, Rainer Kattel

Wimbledon Publishing Company

Copyright © 2012 Leonardo Burlamaqui, Ana Célia Castro and Rainer Kattel editorial matter and selection; individual contributors
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-85728-535-5

Contents

List of Abbreviations, vii, 
List of Tables and Figures, xi, 
Foreword Richard Nelson, xiii, 
Introduction Leonardo Burlamaqui, Ana Célia Castro and Rainer Kattel, xv, 
Part I Knowledge Governance: Building a Framework, 1, 
1. Knowledge Governance: An Analytical Approach and its Policy Implications Leonardo Burlamaqui, 3, 
2. From Intellectual Property to Knowledge Governance: A Micro-founded Evolutionary Explanation Annalisa Primi, 27, 
3. Catching Up and Knowledge Governance Rainer Kattel, 49, 
Part II Innovation, Competition Policies and Intellectual Property: Institutional Fragmentation and the Case for Better Coordination, 79, 
4. Where Do Innovations Come From? Transformations in the US Economy, 1970–2006 Fred Block and Matthew R. Keller, 81, 
5. Antitrust and Intellectual Property: Conflicts and Convergences Mario Luiz Possas and Maria Tereza Leopardi Mello, 105, 
6. The Politics of Pharmaceutical Patent Examination in Brazil Kenneth C. Shadlen, 139, 
Part III Going Forward: Towards a Knowledge Governance Research Agenda, 163, 
7. Varieties of Latin American Patent Offices: Comparative Study of Practices and Procedures Ana Célia Castro, Ana María Pacón and Mônica Desidério, 165, 
8. An Interoperability Principle for Knowledge Creation and Governance: The Role of Emerging Institutions John Wilbanks and Carolina Rossini, 199, 
9. The Search for Alternatives to Patents in the Twenty-First Century Luigi Palombi, 227, 

CHAPTER 1

KNOWLEDGE GOVERNANCE: AN ANALYTICAL APPROACH AND ITS POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Leonardo Burlamaqui

Ford Foundation and State University of Rio de Janeiro

I. Introduction

The field of knowledge is the common property of mankind

— Thomas Jefferson

Why did Schumpeter neglect intellectual property rights? For contemporary Schumpeterians, this question, posed by Mark Blaug in 2005, could be seen as an embarrassing one. How could the "father" of competition by means of innovations manage to miss completely the analysis and discussion of what in today's scholarship is one of the most – if not the most – influential incentive for corporations to innovate continuously? Blaug's own answer to that question is very direct, sharp and does not embarrass at all. It also calls attention to the central issue discussed in this chapter:

It never occurred to anyone before, say the 1980s, that such disparate phenomena as patents for mechanical inventions, industrial products and processes (now extended to biotechnology, algorithms and even business methods), copyrights for the expression of literacy and artistic expressions in fixed form and trademarks and trade names for distinctive services, could be generalized under the heading of property rights, all conferred by the legal system in relation to discrete items of information resulting from some sort of appropriate intellectual activity. (Blaug 2005, 71–2; italics added)

For the purposes of the argument I will develop in this chapter, there are two crucial elements implicit in Blaug's answer. First, that at the time Schumpeter was writing Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, the balance between private interests and the public domain was completely different from what it has become today. Second, that what became codified, and largely accepted, as intellectual property rights was then seen as a set of rules and regulations issued by the state, granting temporary monopolies to corporations in very specific cases.

To this, I will add a conjecture on Schumpeter and property rights: it seems that the kind of "monopolistic practices" he praised in his 1942 book were the ones that resulted from innovations and were short-lived (not those that resulted from legal contracts issued by governments), were built to assure their longevity and were largely written on behalf of oligopolistic corporate interests which were already dominant market players. Summing up, the core argument suggested by the reference to Schumpeter and Blaug is my conviction that in the last three decades, the boundaries of the private (or corporate) interests has been hyperexpanded while the public domain has significantly contracted (cf. Brown-Keyder 2007; Boyle 2008; Rodrik 2011 for similar lines of reasoning).

Recent history seems to back both Blaug's response and my conjuncture. Until the 1970s, United States patents were seen as monopolies (a term with distinctly negative connotations at that time), not rights. In fact, in some areas of economic activity, it would have been possible to say that upholding the validity of IP was the exception rather than the rule (Brown-Keyder 2007, 159). This was reflected in IP law as well as in competition or antitrust law. In copyrights, the term under United States law was 28 years.

The early 1970s witnessed several dramatic changes. In 1974, a trade act allowed the Federal Trade Commission to bring sanctions directly against countries whose products were seen to hurt United States interests. In 1975, copyrights were expanded to over 70 years from the death of the author, and for corporate owners, to 95 and sometimes even 120 years (Brown-Keyder 2007, 158; Boyle 2008, ch. 1). In 1979, Section 301 of the United States trade law was amended to "allow private parties to take significant and public steps to enforce international trade agreements" (Brown-Keyder 2007, 160). In 1988, the Justice Department rescinded guidelines for antitrust prohibitions on certain kinds of licensing clauses. This removed IP licensing from antitrust scrutiny. Finally, with the enactment of the WTO in 1995, the TRIPs agreement quickly became the linchpin of United States trade strategy. By then, private corporations had vastly expanded their enforcement power and global outreach, while the public domain had significantly contracted.

The aim of this chapter is to propose a framework within which, in the field of knowledge, the dividing line between private interests and the public domain can be redrawn. Its goal is to help establish an approach that should, analytically, produce a better way to understand the interaction among knowledge production, appropriation and diffusion and, from a public policy/public interest point of view, to open up the space for a set of rules, regulatory redesign and institutional coordination which would favor the commitment to distribute (disseminate) over the right to exclude. We will label it a "knowledge governance" approach.

As referenced in the introduction to this volume, contemporary research on open- source innovation and the shifting boundaries between intellectual property and the public domain by Harvard, Stanford and Duke legal scholars Yochai Benkler, Lawrence Lessig and James Boyle, and on consumer-based innovation by MIT economist Eric von Hippel and his research team, is throwing new light on matters like growth dynamics, innovation patterns, the interaction of competition and regulation and on new ways in which firms and consumers interact. Their new findings and insights point to the necessity of rethinking patent law as well as...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Anthem Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0857285351
• ISBN 13: 9780857285355
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 300
• Herausgeber: Burlamaqui Leonardo, Castro Anna Célia, Kattel Rainer
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland