Two days ago, I happened to come across an article in the Indian express titled “innovation gridlock”. The article was originally taken from a book called, "The gridlock economy". It talks about the gridlock which has been created by the patent system. It has been explained with the example of drug industry that the patent system supposed to spur innovation is in effect stifling that. There are here and there bits of startling advances in drug industry. These bits united together can enable development of many life-saving drugs but they are stopped from coming up by this gridlock. So, the intellectual property regime is in fact hindering intellectual progress. The same applies to innovations in many fields such as nanotechnology, semiconductors, software and telecom etc that demand assembly of many intellectual properties. The humanity has managed to advance from the stone age to the modern civilised world of miraculous technologies due to the single human virtue of cooperation. We as human beings could manage to survive by now only because of cooperation. Cooperation is basic to our existence in every aspect. Most or in a way all of the technological progress are results of cooperation within human minds. Not allowing the minds from cooperating due to narrow economic interest and still expecting more and more useful and advanced innovations is simply like forgetting the basics.
1 comment:
I think patent regime has definitely affected innovations adversely. When patent system is in place then further development of an innovation gets hampered as nobody else other than the developer can work on the product. It blocks any possibility of cooperation between firms or nations to develop new products as each one tries to get the benefit of patents alone. So it affects the very tendency of cooperation among people, firms and nations.
Post a Comment