In Search of Balance for Intellectual Property Protections

Despite a lack of pending legislation, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing yesterday on international enforcement of intellectual property rights, perhaps in light of the talks at the G8 summit to strengthen intellectual property protection which have caused quite a bit of buzz. For the most part, the hearing was disappointingly fluffy; much of the testimony focused on affirming that intellectual property breaches are a problem, both domestically and internationally. Andrew Lack, chairman of Sony BMG, asserted both within his written testimony and later in the hearing that the United States should specifically block Russia from entering into the World Trade Organization until they improve the “rampant copyright piracy” inside their borders, while Jeffery Kindler from Pfizer mourned the staggering numbers of bogus drugs available on the Internet.

John Cahill of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, reminded Congress that piracy is not a victimless crime. Healthcare and pensions for stagehands, TV producers, animators, and even hair and make-up stylists depend in part on the residuals received from the sale of DVDs. His testimony was a jarring reminder that even when the artists themselves assert that file sharing doesn’t hurt, others in the industry are affected.

Stanford Professor Emeritus John Barton noted that the issue of intellectual property rights is a complex international issue, especially when it comes to climate change technology and medical advancements. He stated that international IP policy “is about global allocation of the cost of research. It is certainly reasonable that other wealthy nations should not be entitled to a free ride on the benefits of U.S. research, but it is also reasonable that the poor should not have to pay as large a share of those research costs as the wealthy.” The reminder that responding to crises, be they food, medical, or climate, is the responsibility of an industrialized nation in an increasingly borderless world tempered the tone of a hearing that was otherwise focused on the injustice of piracy.

Overall this brief hearing highlighted problems we’ve been talking about for years without offering much new discussion. Cahill, Kindler, and Lack all expressed a need for more resources and more enforcement, but none provided clarity as to what agency is responsible for this enforcement or what form it should take. What we really need is a more substantive discussion about IP protection that also addresses the urgent needs of developing nations for access to drugs and efficient technology. At the request of Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT), Barton and Kindler promised to collaborate in search of the appropriate balance of property rights and technology sharing and report back in a month. We look forward to hearing their proposed solutions.

Tags: intellectual property

Comments on this article

You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.