IPR Regime: Whom does it protect?

"Intellectual Property" that buzzword of technologists, capitalists and of the newly globalized world, has shaped the world over the last 10,000 years. The ingenuity of mankind has solved many puzzles, understood and harnessed nature, synthesized new products, mastered the human body and sent man into space. Human thought has created the communication and transportation revolutions which has (to borrow from Iridium's famous line) made "Geography to become History".

I don't claim to be an expert in world legal affairs, economics or on the benefits and ills of the patent regime in capitalism, I present here my views based on my personal experiences and raise a few questions!

How do ideas and products evolve?

How did all this worldwide innovation that harnessed the power of the human brain over a few thousand years happen? From Eureka moments of a few individuals where they came up with a completely new solution in a giffy or from inspiration of problems solved earlier, of incrementally building upon partial solutions of others? Many innovations, especially in today's age are worked upon simultaneously by many people all over the world and the solutions are not very different. Recent articles about Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection (and Evolution), point to the role of substantial ideas of one of his compatriots Thomas Malthus who sent him manuscripts of his ideas from half way across the world that Darwin built upon. Malthus did not mind Charles Darwin taking all the credit. Darwin just took a lot of those combined ideas to market! Therefore who owns the "Intellectual Property" and has the IPR?

Protect it through a patent?

Some years ago a start up that I co-founded "invented" some neat (8) ideas on mobility - location based advertising, unified messaging interface, universal mobility client, etc. Our board and investors discussed if we should patent them in the US. Costs, @ $50,000 per patent if done through lawyers based in the US and $5000 if done through lawyers based in India filing patents in the US. I talked to a few start ups who had filed US patents for their ideas - the verdict, yeah go ahead and file a patent - better to say its patented than to say its patentable, but remember it will not help get revenues or customers. The patents were filed and many of the ideas are now rolled out by many other companies, but we cant (and wont!) do a thing about it. Did companies "copy" our ideas? Maybe, but that's really a part of evolutionary thinking and how many different ways can the world solve a given problem - most people in a sector think alike, networked as they are.

Whom does a patent protect? The incumbents and the rich?

So we are not in a position to protect our patents! Can we raise the resources to get lawyers to protect them? Maybe we could? Is it worth it ? Maybe many million $s. Will we - no, we'll go invent the next idea and better monetize it ourselves next time by selling our products in the market. Sam Pitroda in one of the entrepreneur lecture series in Bangalore in 2004 talked all about his work in the US where he had filed more than 50 patents. He then came to India, setup CDOT and worked for a salary of 1$/month for many years. He then went through a heart surgery, his kids were to go to college in the US and found that he had run out of money and had to earn some again. He went back to the US, found and sued all those big companies that had violated his patents - including some who had PDA products, the "basic" idea for which he had filed a patent 20 years before" Sam Pitroda, could protect his patents, not sure how many others can do it and was it fair for him to sue based on a "basic" idea 20 years ago - well, he just used the current system to make some money and why not?

Another one to make the lawyers rich?

Large US companies and indeed many companies all over the world have a battery of lawyers that work 8x5 (they don't need to work 24x7 for the big bucks they make) helping their company file a few patents each day and then look out for patent infringements by other smaller or larger companies. So the big and rich companies protect themselves, make money by suing others and the lawyers get their big bucks by working a few hours each week. Filing patents seem to make the lawyers richer and the scientists and entrepreneurs much poorer without actually being able to protect their patents without spending some more money!

Secrets are best kept by not sharing them - but then how do you get the moolah?

Many IT products especially in the CAD/CAM area come with hardware locks. The software works only with the hardware lock dongle which is sold to the buyer of their million $ product. Can this be viable for sub $100 or even $100K products, I am not so sure. In the IT world we are sometimes not sure whether to show even prospects a presentation or demo and email them a PPT or just "show" it to them via Webex or through a video conference. And think of all the "trusted sales enablers" and contacts that one may need to send the information to. The only thing that will work is to carefully pre-qualify whom to send it to, but with an element of risk! Send it you will, since that's the way you will get it to market and make your moolah. Take it to market rapidly and have enough in it in terms of "new technology" so that you get time to take it to market before others catch up with you. If you cant, before others catch up, so be it.

Innovation is being globalized

Jenga toys - invented from an African idea of wooden building blocks, but patented by and taken to market by an American. Poly Al, a roofing material made from recycled "tetrapacks", invented in Kenya, perfected in Brazil and now being introduced into many parts of the world by Tetrapak! Mobile Ring tones, invented in Finland, created billions of dollars of business for many businesses all over the world. Could the inventors (especially in Africa) all have filed US patents (or for that matter a patent granted in India or by the UN) and then protected them by spending a quarter million $s in filling and then protecting them? Therefore, whats the way to protect your IP? By the ways of the jungle....

Let the wild jungles of capitalism - stay wild

True capitalism is about innovation, competition and democratic access to markets. Incumbents, like the lions and tigers of the jungle will mark and protect their territories with all their might and as long as they can. New comers need to be agile, swift and have new ideas to dislodge the incumbents. No problem, the new comers will work hard to take on and dislodge the powerful incumbents as long as they are not protected by the state through the "crutches" of "Intellectual Property Rights". IPR is the same feudal system of protecting incumbents and the powerful that democracies work at dismantling. Let the laws of the jungle prevail and not the crutches of a document of a half baked idea that was filed away somewhere. Let the brave hearts who ran with their idea, put their money, effort and life at stake, reap the rewards without the crutches!

Piracy is free publicity, expands markets - harness it

One of the companies that I am on the board of got a legal notice from Microsoft a couple of years ago. "Your company last bought a Microsoft product in 2000 and no more since then up to 2007. Your company must have grown in this time and therefore you seem to be using unlicensed Microsoft software, please explain" Hey, no contact from Microsoft Sales in the last 7 years to ask if we needed any more of their products and then this notice instead of working on pricing mechanisms that expand the market. The truth is that the company had definitely grown in revenues in that period but not in the number of people who needed MS-Office or a new version of their product. Many years ago when there were no Eastern Economy Editions, Asian Editions and Indian Editions of books, the footpaths of most Indian cities sold so many "photo-copied" books of foreign authors. Most of that has reduced/changed, with the cheaper (Rs. 99/-)editions and paperbacks that are now available. People don't need to "xerox" books anymore. Tally, arguably the best known Indian software product, has only its own pirated copies as its competitor. They ran an amnesty scheme to convert a lot of these into licensed copies, brought down prices and expanded their market manifold. The Netscape Internet browser over which Microsoft and Netscape bitterly contested a much publicized anti-trust suit is now sold FREE packaged with the PC/laptop and the first idea for the browser was itself invented at CERN in Europe! In many other instances, (alleged) trademark infringements can at best be called "unimaginative" where the person who copied it didn't use much imagination and just produced something "similar".

Our daughters aged 6 and 10, often come to us (usually the elder one) saying "She's copying me", expecting us to reprimand the "offender". We have tried several ways to explain that its the good ideas that are copied and that she should be proud of her idea that was copied, that she herself got her idea from somewhere else, but the complaints continue. Its still too early to tell her about the Laws of the Jungle!!