Guardian 2002-03-12: Patent Nonsense

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalisation/story/0,7369,665969,00.html

   Patent nonsense
   Companies now demanding intellectual property rights were built up
   without them
   George Monbiot
   Tuesday March 12, 2002
   The Guardian

...

   In Industrialisation without National Patents, published in 1971, the
   economic historian Eric Schiff tells the story of the emergence of
   some of Europe's biggest corporations. They came into being in
   Switzerland and the Netherlands during the period (1850-1907 in
   Switzerland; 1869-1912 in the Netherlands) in which neither country
   recognised patents. Some of them appear to owe their very existence to
   this exemption.
   [...]
   Switzerland and the Netherlands eventually adopted patent laws in
   response to threats from other industrialised nations. This, Schiff
   argues, was a political decision, not an economic one. It is, he
   notes, "difficult to avoid the impression" that the absence of patent
   laws "furthered, rather than hampered development". The two countries
   relied for their growth not upon exclusive rights but upon high
   educational standards and technical ability.

   These examples do not necessarily suggest that the abandonment of
   patent protection is an essential precondition for development. But
   they do indicate that it can, in the right circumstances, be an
   effective tool. This tool has been denied to poor nations, partly as a
   result of energetic lobbying by the very companies which once made use
   of it.
   [...]
   www.monbiot.com

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
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