This week is the annual General Assembly of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which was set up to administer the 1883 Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property and the 1883 Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.
These two agreements, and subsequent international agreements on plant varieties, trademarks, and even Internet domain names comprise the international intellectual property system, which WIPO administers as a technical body. Yet, from much WIPO discussion, you could be forgiven for picking up the false impression that it was really some US plot.
In fact, a coalition of global activist organizations have seized upon intellectual property (IP) protection as Public Enemy #1 in their campaign against all things U.S., and for several years have been propagandizing against intellectual property rights with such over-the-top rhetoric as "patents kill" and "information wants to be free."
But when they say "information wants to be free," they aren't talking about encyclopedias. They're talking about YOUR information – your patents and copyrights – your property and livelihood.
They are talking about the goods that make the U.S. economy globally competitive. A 2005 study by economist Stephen Siwek found that the IP industries are "the most important growth drivers in the current U.S. economy, contributing nearly 40% of the growth achieved by all U.S. private industry and nearly 60% of the growth of U.S. exportable products and services," and are "among the largest and highest-paying employers in the country, representing 18 million workers who earn on average 40% more than all U.S. workers."
Attacks on intellectual property protection are attacks on the U.S. economy, as well as on the productive sectors of just about every nation's economy.
What’s more, IP critics cannot empirically demonstrate that patents "kill," or that somehow copyright inhibited creativity but yet they go on.
In a few weeks, these very same activists will travel to the World Health Organization (WHO), where they will claim that patents on drugs are the reasons that drugs aren't available to the poor. The truth is that patents are the reason the medicines exist in the first place. There are undoubtedly obstacles that inhibit access to medicines in poor countries, but the main obstacle is poverty, not patents.
At WIPO, these discussions matter. The world's IP system is being questioned, and the result could be policies that will erode the system that has resulted in so much creativity and innovation for the last 100 years. Across the ocean at WIPO and the WHO, the seeds are being planted that could results in serious harm to health and economic growth for the nations of the world. This IP stuff really matters.