Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- PART I International Provision of Public Goods under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime
- PART II Innovation and Technology Transfer in a Protectionist Environment
- PART III Sectoral Issues: Essential Medicines and Traditional Knowledge
- PART IV Reform and Regulation Issues
- 22 Issues Posed by a World Patent System
- 23 Intellectual Property Arbitrage: How Foreign Rules Can Affect Domestic Protections
- 24 An Agenda for Radical Intellectual Property Reform
- Comment: Whose Rules, Whose Needs? Balancing Public and Private Interests
- 25 Diffusion and Distribution: The Impacts on Poor Countries of Technological Enforcement within the Biotechnology Sector
- 26 Equitable Sharing of Benefits from Biodiversity-Based Innovation: Some Reflections under the Shadow of a Neem Tree
- 27 The Critical Role of Competition Law in Preserving Public Goods in Conflict with Intellectual Property Rights
- 28 Expansionist Intellectual Property Protection and Reductionist Competition Rules: A TRIPS Perspective
- 29 Can Antitrust Policy Protect the Global Commons from the Excesses of IPRs?
- Comment I: Competition Law as a Means of Containing Intellectual Property Rights
- 30 “Minimal” Standards for Patent-Related Antitrust Law under TRIPS
- Comment II: Competitive Baselines for Intellectual Property Systems
- 31 WTO Dispute Settlement: Of Sovereign Interests, Private Rights, and Public Goods
- 32 The Economics of International Trade Agreements and Dispute Settlement with Intellectual Property Rights
- 33 Intellectual Property Rights and Dispute Settlement in the World Trade Organization
- 34 WTO Dispute Resolution and the Preservation of the Public Domain of Science under International Law
- 35 Recognizing Public Goods in WTO Dispute Settlement: Who Participates? Who Decides? The Case of TRIPS and Pharmaceutical Patents Protection
- Index
24 - An Agenda for Radical Intellectual Property Reform
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- PART I International Provision of Public Goods under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime
- PART II Innovation and Technology Transfer in a Protectionist Environment
- PART III Sectoral Issues: Essential Medicines and Traditional Knowledge
- PART IV Reform and Regulation Issues
- 22 Issues Posed by a World Patent System
- 23 Intellectual Property Arbitrage: How Foreign Rules Can Affect Domestic Protections
- 24 An Agenda for Radical Intellectual Property Reform
- Comment: Whose Rules, Whose Needs? Balancing Public and Private Interests
- 25 Diffusion and Distribution: The Impacts on Poor Countries of Technological Enforcement within the Biotechnology Sector
- 26 Equitable Sharing of Benefits from Biodiversity-Based Innovation: Some Reflections under the Shadow of a Neem Tree
- 27 The Critical Role of Competition Law in Preserving Public Goods in Conflict with Intellectual Property Rights
- 28 Expansionist Intellectual Property Protection and Reductionist Competition Rules: A TRIPS Perspective
- 29 Can Antitrust Policy Protect the Global Commons from the Excesses of IPRs?
- Comment I: Competition Law as a Means of Containing Intellectual Property Rights
- 30 “Minimal” Standards for Patent-Related Antitrust Law under TRIPS
- Comment II: Competitive Baselines for Intellectual Property Systems
- 31 WTO Dispute Settlement: Of Sovereign Interests, Private Rights, and Public Goods
- 32 The Economics of International Trade Agreements and Dispute Settlement with Intellectual Property Rights
- 33 Intellectual Property Rights and Dispute Settlement in the World Trade Organization
- 34 WTO Dispute Resolution and the Preservation of the Public Domain of Science under International Law
- 35 Recognizing Public Goods in WTO Dispute Settlement: Who Participates? Who Decides? The Case of TRIPS and Pharmaceutical Patents Protection
- Index
Summary
The topic of this volume is one aspect of a broader issue, which is the capture of the laws of property by interests that can benefit from them. Individual property rights have intrinsic social value because they can civilize self-interest by forcing it to serve the public good. This phenomenon provides escape from “the tragedy of the commons” by preserving natural resources, and it also makes innovation possible. Because information constitutes a “natural commons,” the production of valuable information goods could fail to attract investment without property rights. Since innovation is the turning of information into concrete reality, if copying could not be prevented, there would be little information worth copying and little innovation.
However, the fruitful harmony between private interest and public good that property rights can deliver is inherently unstable. Those who are forced to promote the public good with what they own readily learn how to escape such constraints. They do this by gaining control of the relevant property laws and reshaping them to advance their private interests. Indeed, because property laws are always under threat of corruption in this way, John Stuart Mill could rightly note that “the laws of property have never yet conformed to the principles on which the institution of private property rests.”
The ability of property owners to influence legislation has accelerated greatly during the last century, a trend that was noted as early as 1962 by Buchanan and Tullock in their famous book “The Calculus of Consent:”
We may observe a notable expansion in the range and extent of collective activity over the last half-century – especially in that category of activity appropriately classified as differential or discriminatory legislation. […]
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- International Public Goods and Transfer of Technology Under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime , pp. 653 - 661Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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