Intellectual Property, Dissemination of Innovation and Sustainable Development
| Published date | 01 October 2010 |
| Author | Claude Henry,Joseph E. Stiglitz |
| Date | 01 October 2010 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-5899.2010.00048.x |
Intellectual Property, Dissemination
of Innovation and Sustainable
Development
Claude Henry
IDDRI – Sciences Po and Columbia University
Joseph E. Stiglitz
Columbia University and Brooks World Poverty Institute, Manchester University
Abstract
We live in a knowledge economy. The production and
dissemination of knowledge will be central to solving
the problems of climate change and environmental
sustainability, reducing global poverty and addressing
other global problems. This article asks: do intellectual
property rights – with their increasingly global reach –
further or hinder the production and dissemination of
knowledge? Experience with genetically modified
organisms shows that a model markedly different
from the current one is more likely to bring wider
social benefits, both in the short and the long run.
Indeed, the current system may impede both
innovation and dissemination. There are reforms in
the intellectual property regime, and more broadly in
the way we finance, organize and incentivize
innovation, that would increase the pace of innovation
and its utilization. The spread of the current
dysfunctional system owes much to the evolution of
intellectual property rights in the US – and the
influence of particular special interests there.
Policy Implications
•A well-functioning patent system requires careful
attention to a number of details, including: (1) what
can be patented; (2) the breadth of a patent; and
(3) the standards of novelty that determine whether
an innovation is eligible for a patent. Corporate
interests have resulted in a patent system which
answers each of these questions in a way that may
impede not only the utilization of knowledge, but
even innovation.
•Among the details that matter is the process by
which patents are granted. The current system
grants too many ‘bad’ patents. Opening the process
of examination of patent candidates to all parties
that reveal themselves as having private information
relevant to a thorough examination (in a process
called opposition) should reduce the number of
‘bad’ patents.
•The patent system is only one part of a society’s
innovation system, through which the production of
knowledge is financed, incentivized and organized.
Too much attention has been focused on IPR
(intellectual property rights), and too little on alter-
natives, e.g. open source systems, publicly financed
innovation and prizes.
•Providing more scope for compulsory licenses –
making it easier for countries to issue them – would
reduce some of the inefficiencies associated with the
current patent system.
One does not need to be an expert to understand that the
development path on which we are globally drifting is
unsustainable. We now understand that the growth path in
the United States based on the real estate bubble was not
sustainable. As the aphorism puts it, that which is not sus-
tainable will not be sustained, and so it should not have
come as a surprise that growth based on a bubble was not
sustained. But the problem of environmental sustainability
is even worse. It is apparent that the world cannot sustain
the patterns of consumption that prevail in the US. It will
not be easy, to say the least, to switch from the present
path to a significantly more sustainable one. Success will
require a determined mobilization of all relevant scientific
and technical resources, as well as a transformation of
behaviors and institutions.
Revolutionary advances since the 1920s in physics, chem-
istry and life sciences have made available many more
scientific and technical resources than are currently being
utilized. Even among those that are still not available, some
of the most critical ones (like efficient electricity storage
and workable carbon capture and sequestration from both
concentrated and diffuse sources) could be developed in
Global Policy Volume 1 . Issue 3 . October 2010
Global Policy (2010) 1:3 doi: 10.1111/j.1758-5899.2010.00048.x Copyright 2010 London School of Economics and Political Science and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Research Article
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