The Negative Impact of TRIPS on Gender Rights in Access to Health and Food in India: A Study of the Dynamics of Knowledge Economy and Neo-Medieval Governance

Southern developing nations are increasingly emulating the knowledge economy followed by the developed nations of the North. This paradigm is characterized by the signature feature of the regime of TRIPS or individualized legal patents, particularly bio-patents developed through biotechnology in pharmaceutical and agriculture. It is also characterized by corporate social responsibility as a market mode of governance of development and increasing state retrenchment from delivery of public welfare. This form of economy is embedded in multilayered governance of neo-medieval governance where states and corporations tussle for the right to define growth and equity. This thesis argues that such a mode of economy and governance has failed to deliver equity for the marginalized poor women in India. This is explicated through four critical factors. First, there is increasing biopiracy of tribal women\u27s traditional knowledge and denuding of uncodified knowledge of tribal women due to land deprivation which in turn severely affects their health. Second, a thriving pharmaceutical sector has failed to deliver health equity for poor women, particularly by being engaged in creation of medicines that do not have relevance for the main disease profile of the poor - communicable diseases. Third, there is rise of non-communicable diseases of the poor. Patents act as legal barriers to access to medicine and severely impact the health of the poor. Fourth, the rise of Bt seeds in cash crop agriculture has meant that traditionally saved and used food crop seeds are being marginalized and there is a growing agrarian crisis for women who do not have control over land, seeds and seed technology. Fifth, poverty is on the rise which is a sure sign that equity has not trickled down. If the international society of states provides for customized patents for women\u27s traditional knowledge, women\u27s knowledge, health and food security would be better secured

An Examination of Patents, Licensing, Research Tools, and the Tragedy of the Anticommons in Biotechnology Innovation

The continued development of and affordable access to potentially life saving pharmaceuticals, gene therapies and diagnostics is unquestionably a socially important issue. However, crafting government policy to encourage the development of and allowing affordable access to those services and products is difficult. On one hand, the development of those services and products requires a large investment of funds because of the complexity, collaborative nature, and uncertainty of the development of those products and services. Accordingly, investors require the safety of strong and stable patent rights to ensure a return on their investment in the development of a commercial end-product or a research tool. On the other hand, patents may foreclose competition for a particular product or service and enable a company to exact a supra competitive price for that product or service, thus denying access to people unable to afford that product or service. In arriving at that supra competitive price, the company selling the commercial end product may have to include in that price a number of additional costs imposed by holders of patented research tools needed in the development of the commercial end-product. This Article examines whether the development of pharmaceuticals, gene therapies or diagnostics is being stifled by the inability of companies to access proprietary research tools needed for the development of those important products and services. This Article also evaluates proposals for alleviating problems in accessing proprietary research tools, and proposes recommendations to aid in the efficient transfer of that technology. First, this Article recommends that Congress enact a law similar to the proposed Genomic Science and Technology Innovation of Act of 2002, which requires the government to conduct a study of the effect of government policy on biotechnology innovation. Second, this Article recommends that the government encourage public and private parties to enter patent pools to efficiently transfer rights in biotechnology inventions. The government, in conjunction with private and public institutions, should create a publicly available database of proprietary research tools and licenses concerning those tools. The government should also modify the provision of the Bayh-Dole Act concerning reservation of a nonexclusive right to practice any patented invention created with federal funding. The modification would allow the government to transfer a non-exclusive license to a patented research tool developed with government funding to a patent pool created by industry participants if it is demonstrated that the owner of the patented research tool is unreasonably withholding the license of that tool from the pool. Any royalties resulting from the licensing of the research tool in the patent pool will be distributed to the owner of the patented research tool. Part I of this Article provides definitions for research tools and commercial applications. Part II discusses the costs, benefits, and purposes of patent law. Part III reviews university and private research and development, including the influence of the Bayh-Dole Act. Part IV examines the development of commercial applications of biotechnology research, including the role of venture capital and the use of licensing provisions requiring reach through royalties and exclusivity. Part V evaluates problems that may occur in attempting to develop commercial applications and licensing patents. Part VI reviews the Tragedy of the Anticommons theory. Part VII discusses research and analysis concerning the existence of the anticommons problem. Part VIII examines and analyzes potential solutions for solving the Tragedy of the Anticommons in biotechnology. Finally, Part IX offers recommendations for addressing an existing or developing Tragedy of the Anticommons

Impact of intellectual property rights on scientific knowledge diffusion, accumulation and utilization

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2006.Includes bibliographical references.The impact of intellectual property rights on the production, diffusion and accumulation of scientific knowledge has been a central concern of public policymakers and economists in both public and private institutions, and scholars in management economics and sociology. In this dissertation, I examine the central patenting debates over the role of patenting the life sciences and address a set of interrelated questions: (1) the impact of strategic intellectual property policies of institutions on their cumulative knowledge dissemination, utilization and commercialization; (2) the unique attributes of life science innovations captured by patents generated under different institutional settings; and (3) the degree to which patenting activities impact the rate and trajectories of scientific knowledge accumulation under varying intellectual property conditions. I take as my research setting, the Human Genome Project (HGP) and our mapping of the entire human genome that emerged from the project (as defined in both scientific publications and patents). The HGP was a 13-year, $3.8 billion research effort funded and coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institute of Health, and one of the most significant life science research projects ever undertaken.(cont.) To address the first question, I study the seven key genome centers in the HGP, which produced almost all the genome sequence output and provide an unusually matched and well-controlled natural experiment to examine the impact of different knowledge institutions on the subsequent diffusion of scientific knowledge. To explore the second question, I build on the data set of the population of 4270 gene patents to systematically quantify and analyze the important attributes of these gene-based innovations. Through the construction of a set of validated measures, I specifically characterize the variation in these innovations when made under public versus private institutional settings and compare them to the innovations across broad technology fields from previous studies. To answer the third question, I identify and construct a large-scale, novel data set of 1279 unique patent-paper pairs from the gene patents and apply econometric models to shed light on the degree to which patent grant in the life sciences impacts the rate of follow-on scientific research. I find that publications with matched patent pairs are associated with higher citations on the average. Since only an institutional policy allowing patents results in patents, such policy does not stifle cumulative knowledge dissemination and use. In addition, patents contribute to technological innovation, commercialization and start-up.(cont.) Furthermore, I identified a growing convergence of public/academic and industry innovations in the life sciences especially in terms of their "basicness" and appropriability as characterized by the Pasteur's quadrant, and that variation in institutional setting is associated with differential innovation characteristics. I also find evidence of "technological trajectories", coherence and persistence across various attributes of life science innovations. However, I determine that gene patenting impedes temporal knowledge diffusion and use and decreases citations of paired publications once they are granted and become "visible" to the public, as predicted by the anti-commons effect. I also ascertain that patenting hinders knowledge diffusion and use to a greater degree on private sector authored publications than public ones and for U.S. authored than non-U.S. authored ones, and that corporate patenting has a more adverse impact than public institution patenting. As the first study of its kind to directly test the "patent thicket" conceptualization, I find direct statistical evidence of the adverse effect of "patent thickets" and that the patenting of disease and cancer genes negatively impacts knowledge dissemination and use by follow-on scientists and researchers.by Kenneth Guang-Lih Huang.Ph.D

Constructing knowledge-based industries in the globalization era: Social learning, the political process and commitment strategies

This research addresses two puzzles: Why do similar regions within countries pursue different commitment strategies towards growing their bioscience industries? Why do some change in response to a global financial shock and others do not? I argue that the presence and strength of a knowledge-oriented strategy team (KOST) helps to explain different levels of and changes in bioscience commitment strategies. The study weaves in additional explanations including natural resources, rival industries, national institutions and path dependence. The most significant finding of this research is that those Canadian provinces that established a strong KOST prior to the 2008 global financial crisis "puzzled and powered through" to maintain high level commitments to their bioscience industries afterwards. Their KOSTs engaged in disruptive social learning and coordinative bargaining processes.Ph.D

The Digital Public Domain: Foundations for an Open Culture

Digital technology has made culture more accessible than ever before. Texts, audio, pictures and video can easily be produced, disseminated, used and remixed using devices that are increasingly user-friendly and affordable. However, along with this technological democratization comes a paradoxical flipside: the norms regulating culture's use —copyright and related rights —have become increasingly restrictive. This book brings together essays by academics, librarians, entrepreneurs, activists and policy makers, who were all part of the EU-funded Communia project. Together the authors argue that the Public Domain —that is, the informational works owned by all of us, be that literature, music, the output of scientific research, educational material or public sector information —is fundamental to a healthy society. The essays range from more theoretical papers on the history of copyright and the Public Domain, to practical examples and case studies of recent projects that have engaged with the principles of Open Access and Creative Commons licensing. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the current debate about copyright and the Internet. It opens up discussion and offers practical solutions to the difficult question of the regulation of culture at the digital age. The free PDF edition of this title was made possible by generous funding received from the European Union (eContentplus framework project ECP-2006-PSI-610001)

The Digital Public Domain: Foundations for an Open Culture

Digital technology has made culture more accessible than ever before. Texts, audio, pictures and video can easily be produced, disseminated, used and remixed using devices that are increasingly user-friendly and affordable. However, along with this technological democratization comes a paradoxical flipside: the norms regulating culture's use — copyright and related rights — have become increasingly restrictive. This book brings together essays by academics, librarians, entrepreneurs, activists and policy makers, who were all part of the EU-funded Communia project. Together the authors argue that the Public Domain — that is, the informational works owned by all of us, be that literature, music, the output of scientific research, educational material or public sector information — is fundamental to a healthy society. The essays range from more theoretical papers on the history of copyright and the Public Domain, to practical examples and case studies of recent projects that have engaged with the principles of Open Access and Creative Commons licensing. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the current debate about copyright and the Internet. It opens up discussion and offers practical solutions to the difficult question of the regulation of culture at the digital ag

Innovation, Economic Development, and Intellectual Property in India and China

This open access book analyses intellectual property codification and innovation governance in the development of six key industries in India and China. These industries are reflective of the innovation and economic development of the two economies, or of vital importance to them: the IT Industry; the film industry; the pharmaceutical industry; plant varieties and food security; the automobile industry; and peer production and the sharing economy. The analysis extends beyond the domain of IP law, and includes economics and policy analysis. The overarching concern that cuts through all chapters is an inquiry into why certain industries have developed in one country and not in the other, including: the role that state innovation policy and/or IP policy played in such development; the nature of the state innovation policy/IP policy; and whether such policy has been causal, facilitating, crippling, co-relational, or simply irrelevant. The book asks what India and China can learn from each other, and whether there is any possibility of synergy. The book provides a real-life understanding of how IP laws interact with innovation and economic development in the six selected economic sectors in China and India. The reader can also draw lessons from the success or failure of these sectors