"Intellectual Productions Rights" / Patents, Copyright, Trademarks (PCT)

["Seth Johnson" <seth.johnson@realmeasures.dyndns.org>]

(Forwarded from CANOPENER list.  Not endorsing every aspect of 
Russell's summary as such, but the event he's reporting is notable.  --
 Seth)

-----Original Message-----
From: Russell McOrmond <russell@flora.ca>
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 15:49:27 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [discuss] Another win: "Intellectual Property Rights" --
> "Intellectual Productions Rights" / Patents, Copyright, Trademarks 
(PCT)


  Since we would like to see positive momentum reported in the media 
as well as some of the reactions to the negative things, I wanted to 
mention a clear win for "our side".

  Back in the early 1970's the term "Intellectual Property" came into 
vogue, largely because of the formation of a UN special agency called 
the World Intellectual Property Organization 
<http://www.wipo.int/about-wipo/en/gib.htm#P29_4637>.  Before that the 
different areas of law were recognized as separate, and there was more 
clarity separating copyright from intangible industrial property such 
as patents, trademarks and industrial design.

  Since this time the term "Intellectual Property" has been used and 
abused to subject all these forms of intangible assets to a very 
narrow industrial/manufacturing view of the world.  Not only has 
copyright been radically transformed into being treated as a form of 
industrial property, but industrial property that previously only 
regulated the manufacturing sector is now being applied entirely 
outside of that sector.

  Rather than thinking of the knowledge economy as something that 
could be as new as the Industrial economy was from the agricultural 
and other past economies, the push has been to make all knowledge into 
industrial property to attempt to fit into business models from the 
old economy. Many of todays litigation-vs-innovation problems we have 
stem from this anti-innovative, anti-creative thinking.


  While the term "intellectual property" came into vogue via the 
United Nations, it may be the UN that will help move us away from this 
limiting thinking.

  As part of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS 
http://www.itu.int/wsis/ ;) a working group was formed to 
discuss "Intellectual Property Rights".  As part of their discussions, 
however, they have decided to disclaim the use of that term and to 
instead talk about Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks.  When 
discussing them all together they will use the acronym PCT.

  In fact they go into some detail on this in an IPR disclaimer 
http://www.wsis-pct.org/ipr-disclaimer.html, further suggesting ;
that, "if the IPR acronym is used, we encourage people to give to this 
acronym the meaning of 'Intellectual Productions Rights' instead".

  I think that this is possibly an early win that could eventually 
mark the beginning of the end of the usage of the confusing 
term "intellectual property", outside of the efforts of the special 
interest "knowledge manufacturing" lobby.


---cut---

Todays suggested "light" reading *grins*

Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm Yochai Benkler

http://weblog.flora.ca/article.php3?story_id=491

   For decades our understanding of economic production has been that 
individuals order their productive activities in one of two ways: 
either as employees in firms, following the directions of managers, or 
as individuals in markets, following price signals.
....
   I suggest that we are seeing is the broad and deep emergence of a 
new, third mode of production in the digitally networked environment. 
I call this mode "commons-based peer-production," to distinguish it 
from the property- and contract-based models of firms and markets.

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> 
 Governance software that controls ICT, automates government policy, 
or  electronically counts votes, shouldn't be bought any more than 
politicians should be bought.  -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/

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