Intellectual property rights are simply the theft of the knowledge that is the right of all humans. Intellectual property rights are an essential part of being able to build a modern and rich economy.
Yes.
That is, both statements are true. Which is what underlines the importance of what Umran Chowdhury was telling us about how Bangladesh must overhaul and update the local system of both acknowledging and protecting such intellectual property.
For our basic problem is that many things cost nothing to copy or recreate -- or as close to nothing as makes no difference. People would be made richer by being able to have these things, therefore it is just and righteous that they have them. Our aim is, after all, to make the poor rich, to raise, as far as we can, the living standards of all within our society. If it costs nothing, then why shouldn’t the poor have, for free, the products of the human mind?
That is, inventions, books, music, even brands, why do we try to protect them with respectively patents, copyright, and trademarks? The answer being that we’re trying to optimize the number of them over time, not just in the here and now.
More specifically, our problem comes from the manner in which these things are so easily copied. It takes time and effort -- economic resources and therefore money -- to make the first of any of these things. The second of them can be made for near nothing. We’ve therefore got to try and devise a system in which the first is still created, even if we can’t charge much for the second of them.
In technical terms, this is the public good problem. Things that are desirable but which private economic actors won’t be motivated to produce simply because they cannot profit from having done so. A book might take three months of concentrated effort to write -- if anyone and everyone can copy it then who is to pay for that three months work?
A software program might be tens of man years of effort, and so how much does that first copy have to be sold for if the second is to be free for the copying cost?
So, we place a limitation upon that copying. We invent a property right which limits that ability to copy. Sure, it’s absolutely true that what has already been created can and perhaps should be had for free. But we do it so that we continue to gain the new works.
This process can be taken too far though, and the modern world does. The reason to do this is the encouragement of that creation of the new. It’s purely pragmatic. But the truly poor, they’re not part of this equation at all. Because they have no money -- therefore their having it for free or being required to pay for it makes no difference at all.
Because they have no money and that copyright doesn’t mean that they will. Another way to put this is that if something is copied for free for the poor, it doesn’t change the incentive to create the new one single iota. Because either way, there’s going to be no money for the creator.
There is thus a useful stance that can be taken on this subject of intellectual property rights. Let the poor places steal away but try to make the middle income and above pay. Which is rather the cusp where we think Bangladesh is now, isn’t it?
But there’s another way around to look at this as well. Which is that the process of becoming a middle income place is that of producing this sort of knowledge that can be copied. Actually, it’s rather a definition. GDP is value, value is what an economy produces. More value being produced is getting richer.
So we’ve naturally got a point in the development of an economy when the sort of value that could and should be protected by patents and other IP laws is being produced in some sort of quantity. The place is becoming a creator, not just consumer, of this knowledge. Which is when it becomes logical for the place, the economy, to be protecting this knowledge capital.
Which is where we come back to Mr Chowdhury and trademarks. Bangladesh is making that transaction from being merely a consumer of the intellectual property of others to where it is producing that sort of value domestically. In order to continue to encourage such creation, the country needs domestic laws to protect it. At which point, of course, it is right and just that foreign such is protected -- so that foreigners will protect that created in Bangladesh.
So, yes, Bangladesh both does need to have, and should construct a proper and efficient system of intellectual property rights. Partly just because this is just what richer places should do, but also because it’s a part of that very process of becoming rich.
Tim Worstall is a Senior Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London.
