The South African Chamnber of Commerce and Industry (SACCI) is on a bit of a roll today, coming out fighting in favour of tighter intellectual property rules but against the suggested special courts for etolls.
The comments around IP are in response to a government document published last month (pdf link) which propose changes in IP law designed to “create an environment conducive to economic opportunities aimed at empowering South African citizens”.
Crucially, the proposals include a comment that “national IP laws must be appropriate to the level of development and innovation of the country”. At the heart of the debate is the argument that while patents exist to protect the rights of inventors and thus encourage innovation – why invent something if someone else can just rip you off – enforcing international patents can be costly (especially if the patent in question is trivial) and stifle innovation if something is just a little bit too similar to a patent for an inventor to carry on with it.
Developing countries have also historically ignored or circumvented international IP laws, weighing their own social needs against the legal risks of infringement. If fridges were patented by a German firm, for example, few South Africans would be able to afford to import one from Europe, but the social need for fridges as a function of survival would justify a local manufacture ripping off the design.
In his book Kicking away the Ladder, Korean economist Ha-Joon Chan argues that developed countries all infringed each other’s patents in the early days of the 19th Century industrial revolution. Once the Germans worked out how to make a British sewing machine, for example, nothing was going to stop them competing in the wool market. As a result, economies benefited all over, even if there were slightly fewer sewing machine sales to Germany. He also argues that South Korea’s rapid development was reliant on high levels of textbook piracy by schools, for example.
SACCI CEO Neren Rau, however, says that South Africa needs stronger, not weaker IP laws in order to protect investment – why would a foreign company conduct R&D here if their products don’t have legal protection?
“It may seem tempting to impose restrictions on IP rights due to “public interest” considerations,” Rau says, “Any such intrusion is likely to significantly damage the origination of future IP in South Africa. In turn, this will mean that South Africa loses out on investments, job creation, technologies and business opportunities associated with the life cycle of IP creation.”
Conversely, an alliance of the Treatment Action Campaign, human rights group Section 27 and Medecin Sans Frontier presented a submission on the same issue today in favour or easing up on IP laws in order to reduce the cost of medicines.
