Christmas + PR + Law = Patents!
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Merry Christmas, dear reader!
I always think about traditions during festivals, mostly those traditions that revolve around food. These days I am also thinking a lot about my blog topic. So this Christmas, I thought about food, PR and the Law. Quite a lot of thinking about unrelated topics, actually! 
Or so I thought until my mind turned to this question: What if the traditional Christmas lunch/dinner of turkey had been patented? Would the Christmas lunch/dinner menu be different? Or would people be paying to have a patented tradition upheld? I suspect the answer would be the former!
Patents have been criticised for conferring a ‘negative right’ upon the patent owner(s), permitting them to exclude competitors from using or exploiting the invention, even if a competitor subsequently develops the same invention independently.
Pharmaceutical patents have had a long-lasting affect on healthcare. Large sections of the population in developing countries are unable to afford the high price tag that patented medicines usually have. Quite a few of these medicines are life-saving drugs, for example the AIDS anti-retrovital drug.
Pharmaceutical companies cite high R&D costs (Banta, 2001) as the reason for exclusivity rights and subsequent high drug prices. Critics and independent audits have investigated pharmaceutical budget allocations to address this price justification and discovered that the marketing expenditures of new drugs are often double the amount that was allocated for R&D (Barton & Emanuel, 2005).
PR campaigns have been fought on both sides of the patent law. The pharmaceutical industry’s campaign efforts have focused on the fact that they are providing differential pricing and parallel imports as a means to provide medication to the poor, sometimes even free of cost.
These findings, among many others, are presented in a very balanced deconstruction of the Perceptions of the Intellectual Property Rights by Roya Ghafele.
The software industry is also patent-driven. There is a PR large-scale campaign currently underway to stop software patents in the European Union. The tactics include lobbying and online petitions and is spearheaded by the Foundation for Free Information Infrastructure.
The Scales of Justice is a symbol for law and are used as one for Intellectual Property Rights as well, of which Patents are a part of.
A few years back when software patent wars had ridiculous levels, an email did the rounds in India. The email revolved around the possible fall out of the Government of India (GoI) patenting ’0′. Yes, you read it right —zero! It is acknowledged that the binary system (on which software coding is based) and ’0′ evolved in India. So, if the GoI patented the ’0′, no other nation could use it. Can you imagine a scenario wherein you could not use ’0′?
Endnote: While this email drew many laughs at the improbable scenario, it brought to light the fact that knowledge can be brought for a price, when actually knowledge is priceless. In the name of patents, copyright, intellectual property rights, and whatever else we may call it, we have forgotten to acknowledge that ultimately it is for the benefit of humanity.
Tags: Copyleft, Intellectual Property Rights, Law, Patents, PR Campaigns
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December 27, 2008 at 7:38 pm
i hav seen the e-mail on zero. the one u mention in your blog. it was funny, no? but very very true. u should have write about the indian gov. fighting against turmeric patent. do u still have that e-mail? can u send it?
January 3, 2009 at 11:44 pm
It was fascinating to read this blog as it was one of the very little available information that I found on importance of linkages between ‘Law’ and ‘Public Relations’ in this era of Globalisation, be it economic, sociocultural or technological.
The various topics covered on Intellectual Property Rights vis a vis copyright, copyleft, anti-copyright, patents and cyber law rightfully explains the importance and dependence on this discipline of public relations by the aforementioned supporters. In fact now I can really connect in my mind the heavy public relations tactics used by the profit making corporate sectors in the early nineties with the WTO (World Trade Organisation) which led to the creation of TRIPs (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Agreement). Further more it was again through the medium of public relations that the citizen sector individuals raised awareness about the adverse effects of TRIPs on access to medicines, bio-piracy, which has forced the WTO to reconsider the TRIPS agreement.
Shall be looking forward to read about more such linkages on your blog……..”