Positive paradigm shifts in the corporate world a boon
to humanity.
Positive paradigm shifts in the corporate world positively impacts
immensely the quality of both the environment and human life.
This has been visible in the past four decades at least in two
areas mentioned below.
1] Modern concept of corporate social responsibility either done
voluntarily or enforced by the state is a good thing and that is being followed
mostly by big MNCs and all other big and responsible business enterprises.
2] Similarly there is a mounting awareness as well as
activist induced concerns towards the welfare of the environment.
Slowly but steadily on these two areas there have been a
marked improvements in the past three decades compared to total lack of concern
for such things prior to that.
In fact in many parts of the world where the government
failed it was the responsible and generous sponsorship of corporate houses that
have helped many human beings get basic health care, education and other
fundamental human needs.
But having deservingly praised the corporate world for its positive
contribution in these areas, there is a major unfulfilled area of concern and
if only the collective wisdom of the corporate world can pledge to get the
complaints in that area too addressed positively in the interests of human race
at large then history will remember such corporate houses and human race would
be always grateful for such activities.
I shall come to what it is but before that I would like to
make an appeal that this has to be addressed purely in the interests of human
race at large and not commercial considerations or legal rights and wrongs.
This can be debated and as history has shown many instances where the common
good of human race prevailed over all other considerations be it the
consideration of interests of a specific nation or a specific profession or
specific ideology etc
What I am talking about is doing away with Intellectual Property
rights and its off springs Patents, Copy Rights, Trade mark, Trade Secrets to
name a few.
Fortunately the UN day of Intellectual Property Rights too
falls in the near future on 26th April 2013. So we can start the
debate. Please try to go through the entire article for the sake of Humanity.
If this happens then probably we would be rewriting the history
of world economy.
I am not a lawyer. What I am going to write may sound high
flown philosophical and idealistic but practically not viable. However, that
does not stop me from putting forth certain questions that have been bothering
me for a very long time regarding the very legitimacy of Intellectual Property
Rights and its off springs Patents, Copy Rights, Trade mark, Trade Secrets to
name a few.
In evolutionary biology we find that all creations have shed
the unnecessary parts or shrunk them for better survival; in evolutionary
sociology too human race has shed too many models of social groups and narrowed
down on a few that would be easier for global interaction; in languages too,
from a few thousands languages that existed humanity has reduced the number to
just a few hundred languages. Similarly there is nothing wrong in giving up in
the interest of evolution of human race, of course against the interest of a
few lawyers who mostly benefit from such laws, we can think of doing away with
this whole set of laws connected with Intellectual property.
What
is Intellectual property (IP)? It basically refers to creations of the mind.
Who is the owner of anyone’s mind? Mind [ a difficult term to define] like
everything else in life is a product of evolution and in its course of evolution
it is inevitably interdependent and
interacts with all other minds either obviously or otherwise, with
itself at varying levels of potency based on different levels of perceiving and performing
capacities at different times. Besides whether we believe in it or not, it is always
aided by a universal mind which works through every individual mind at various
frequencies depending upon various factors like readiness, attitude, and
priorities for the mind space at a specific time etc within which we can
include a whole gamut of things which impact the mind like culture, economic
situation, social set up, education etc.
Even
granting that we are able to satisfactorily come up with legally sustainable
definitions to carry on with this one or two century old legal entity to
justify due acknowledgment and adequate commercial compensation to creators of
original discoveries, designs, inventions, ideas etc and that patents
connect invention to development and manufacturing etc. Still, these
definitions leave out of their gambit all the inventions, ideas, discoveries
and the creators of those inventions etc prior to these laws coming into play.
They cannot forget the fact that even without these patents and trademarks
developments and manufacturing were taking place.
Even after the advent of this backward laws came into force
many sane discoverers and inventors have opted for not patenting like Madame
Curie, one the greatest scientist and the inventor of polio vaccine Jonas Salk
to name a few.
However convinced I was about the negative impact of
Intellectual Property, I still decided to gather enough material from sources
with not only and not necessarily similar thinking individuals but legal
professionals with integrity and others with interest of human race as a
priority to support and substantiate my side of the argument. All the more now,
after recession and intense competition in an age of knowledge enhancement and
execution, when commercial enterprises are unnecessarily wasting too much of
money, man power etc in unwanted patent litigations which profit only the
select group of lawyers and the media which treats these litigation battles as
glamour world gossips to be gobbled up by the gullible public.
As
the great scholar and my favourite author Bertrand Russell writes in POLITICAL IDEALS (1917)CHAPTER IVINDIVIDUAL LIBERTY AND
PUBLIC CONTROL
“The creative impulses, unlike those that are
possessive, are directed to ends in which one man’s gain are not another man’s
loss. The man who makes a scientific discovery or writes a poem is enriching
others at the same time as himself. Any increase in knowledge or good-will is a
gain to all who are affected by it, not only to the actual possessor. Those who
feel the joy of life are a happiness to others as well as to themselves. Force
cannot create such things, though it can destroy them; no principle of
distributive justice applies to them, since the gain of each is the gain of
all. For these reasons, the creative part of a man’s activity ought to be as
free as possible from all public control, in order that it may remain
spontaneous and full of vigor. The only function of the state in regard to this
part of the individual life should be to do everything possible toward
providing outlets and opportunities”.
There
are of course many links on the net where we can find excellent articles and
materials about the irrelevance of the Intellectual Property laws and their off
springs.
I
am giving below some ten which I felt dwelt on the subject with correct
perspective and reflect similar sentiments as indicated above.
Wherein Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine for the Federal
Reserve Bank of St. Louis write and it’s titled “The Case Against Patents” and argues
that our patent laws now do more to hinder innovation than to promote it. And,
since there’s no way to salvage the system, the United States would be better
off scrapping patents entirely.
While
eliminating software patents would be the best solution,
changing the law takes a long time and is uncertain to succeed. I've been
trying to puzzle out how the software industry might rescue itself from
immolation through litigation and came up with the following proposal....
James Watson, Discoverer of DNA: Patenting Human Genes Is “Lunacy”
By Sandra
S. Park, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 12:11pm
The Case Against Patenting Life-John Ikerd
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