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"Progress", IP rights and the lessons of SARS

In many of our discussions of IP rights, here on the WMF projects, I think we need to remember the fundamental reasons why the nations we belong to grant intellectual property rights, in the first place.

"Progress", new invention and expression -- the reason IP rights are granted

Our nations grant those intellectual property rights based on the idea that "progress" is a good thing, where "progress" mean new inventions, new ideas, new forms of expressing ideas, are recognized as good things. Our nations grant inventors patents, that give them limited rights to control how their inventions are used, and make a profit from doing so. Our nations allow composers, photographers, writers, limited rights to profit from their expression of ideas. Inventors, composers, writers are given these rights to make a profit, because their inventions and new expressions are seen as in the public good, and the profits they make from their work is seen as encouraging them to go on and make further inventions, or to encourage others to follow their example, and profit from other new inventions.

The Taliban outlawed painting pictures, performing music, or theatrical works, or movies, because they didn't believe in change, they didn't believe in progress.

In Afghanistan a lack of confidence in the value of change, invention, and cultural expression is widespread. Many of the warlords who formed the Northern Alliance are just as conservative as the Taliban, when it came to the value of change and progress.

It isn't only Afghanistanis who don't believe in new inventions. I attended the University of Waterloo, which is situated in an area of Ontario where many Mennonites lived. Among the dozen or so different Mennonite offshoots in the region, while many lived modern lives, ten or twenty thousand old-order Mennonites eschewed electricity, and internal combustion engines.

The lack of confidence in change and progress is not common, now, in our societies. But, as a big fan of Science Fiction, I have read many stories where a terrible Nuclear war, or a terrible environmental disaster, turns a belief in "Progress" into a shameful fringe position.

The lesson of SARS

in 2002 a new, alarming virus, called SARS, started to kill people. Initially the virus was recognized as frequently deadly, but was otherwise poorly understood.

The virus first struck in China, but travelers who came to Canada from China, triggered a cluster of deaths here too.

There was an anti-viral drug that was initially suspected would have a prophylactic effect. It was then believed that, if this drug was administered to emergency room workers, and other front-line health care workers, they not only would be less likely to acquire the new virus, but would not transmit it to the patients under their care. The Minister of Health, Allan Rock, personally phoned the pharmceutical company that had the patent to distribute that anti-viral drug in Canada. He wanted the company to make a bulk sale of enough doses of the drug for every front-line health care worker likely to come in contact with an infected individual.

Like many other Canadian companies, this was just a branch of a larger US company. Its executives weren't Canadians, they were Americans on temporary assignments to Canada. The executive who spoke with Rock, the Minister of Health, told him that no doses were available to be sold in Canada -- because he thought all their stockpile of doses should be saved for use in the United States.

So the Minister of Health invited other pharmaceutical companies to bid to supply the necessary doses.

Completely forgetting that their patent was, in the end, granted to serve the public good, the company that owned the patent screamed blue murder, over having its patent rights ignored.

I don't know if the drug was ever confirmed to have the prophylactic effect it was first suspected of having. If it did the patent right's intransigence put many people's lives at risk, and caused deaths. One of the most important and widely distributed weapons of World War 2 was the Jeep. Its parents were owned by a very small company. The US Government informed that company that if they didn't agree to license the right to make Jeeps to Ford, General Motors, and other Detroit companies, the Government would expropriate their patents.

SARS was a genuine, deadly emergency. The patent right holders unapologetically placed their profits ahead of the public interest -- and got away with it.