International Piracy of IPR in Developing World
Despite the fact that intellectual property right had a huge impact on essential roles it played towards reaching the effectiveness of fostering creative processes and indirectly causing growth in the economic cycle in developing countries, it has turned to emerge as a prominent policy issue in both civil justice and criminal systems due to growing number of products that can easily be reproduced. They are inexpensive, with very little chance of detection (Hedi, 2004). This has been related to the criminal phenomenon of trademark counterfeits, and copyrights piracy, as it resurfaced to be a significant threat. Several measures have been laid down to try to implement the situation but only turn out infective. For instance, in the year 2007, the developing world held G-8 summit meeting that was scheduled to discuss on ways there would be step up the enforcement of IPRs, launching of intergovernmental negotiations that were towards an Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement, and initiation of WTO dispute on China’s IPR enforcement regime. Despite the fact that all these topic have been discussed, there still heat felt to some of the countries as proper enhancement of these situations are not properly handled. The primary cause of piracy and counterfeiting is the motivation for unscrupulous traders to make significant profits from free-riding artistic ventures and investment of others by handing over imitated goods sought at a lower cost than the ones made by legitimate product manufacturers. This is all that the international treaties have been trying to prevent from happening.
Several factors have contributed to international treaties not achieving its purpose of containing the rates of piracy. A research conducted by Commission (2018) figure out that there was deterioration in the level of IPR protection and enforcement in third countries as per in the past two years. Some of the factors that have to cause the significances of international treaties not to be effective in managing IPR protection are;
First, there has been a rapid economic of the globe and continued growth of India and China, and these countries have increased the stakes for intellectual property owing. They view counterfeiting and piracy as a restriction on their ability to increase sales on rapidly growing markets. In particular, they perceive IPRs infringements as a direct competitive threat as companies in labor-intensive counties copy the latest innovations, and it causes weakening them to achieve their competitive advantage. Similarly, countries that are expected to be at the forefront in discouraging this business tendency, they have been reported to be participating in them. In the United States, there have been several politicians that have been connected lax IPRs enforcement abroad to the county’s persistent trade deficit, more so with China. While the trade balance mainly reflects the difference between domestic and investment savings, such a link has a little economic foundation, it holds political weight and forms the basis of American trade and foreign policy.
Secondly, the rates of piracy have been perceived to achieve extreme levels of operation. In portions, it is claimed that technological developments that facilitate the duplicating of the original products have stimulated counterfeiting growth. As it is obvious that this kind of trade would not exist if there were no customer’s demand and also the large part of the theme believing or having the perception that piracy is harmless offenses. In the public mind, theft of intellectual property is not yet compared to other property violations, crimes such as fraud, theft, or infringement. Due to these facts, users or customers of these products will have the urge to take a step further in adjusting and cater to cheap and faster means to consult the business (Necula & Georgescu, 2013). For instance, the development of easy to copy digitalized storage media has facilitated fast, affordable, and easily reproduction of audiovisual and software production without losing its quality and any content. The spread of online patent databases has made it easier to access new technologies.
Third, among the important pertaining to IPRs, piracy is an issue of public policy. It rises to a state of concern that the resources required for enforcing IPRs are invariably scarce even in richest countries, which are regarded to have the best-staffed law and also the best-equipped law enforcement agencies (Fink, 2008). For instance, it surprising to see France had a percentage of 45 in the year 2006 of business software that had been pirated. Similarly, other countries in the same year as the United States had 21 percent; Germany had 28 percent and 25 percent for Japan. These are the government that are required to make choices as to how many resources to spend on the fight against piracy as opposed to the enforcement of legislation in other areas. Such decisions are usually not explicitly stated, but they are the basis of all federal and local budget decisions.
Lastly, there are is a raise of concern in the way IPRs enforcement is carried out in specific countries. The government is responsible for establishing standards of intellectual property protection under nation legislations ant it appears natural to ensure that individuals and firms comply with these laws. Certainly, some observers argued that the exclusive rights granted under intellectual property law were too strong, and they, at times, opt to conduct debates on ways they would offload much of these tight rules. However, experts argue that none would argue seriously that IPRs laws have been overridden by encouraging illegal conduct. If regulation does not serve the public interest, it should be changed and not disregarded.
To conclude, concerns of IPRs and piracy are raising to be a huge factor for many countries as each country is trying to protect its intellectual property rights. Intellectual property rights have played a significant role in promoting innovative processes and indirectly in the process of economic growth. In developing countries where strong protection of intellectual property rights must be promoted by boosting the profit of innovations and thus providing incentives for innovation, this situation is more critical.
Bibliography
COMMISSION, E. (2018, 2 21). COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT. Report on the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in third countries, 3-5. Retrieved from https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2018/march/tradoc_156634.pdf
Fink, C. (2008, July). Enforcing Intellectual Property Rights: An Economic Perspective. A Study Commissioned by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), 4-10.
Hedi, N. (2004, November). Addressing Global Scope of Intellectual Property Law. Prepared for the National Institute of Justice, The International Center, pp. 1 – 5.
Necula, S.-C., & Georgescu, M. (2013, June). The Impact of Information Piracy and Intellectual Property Rights on the. Advances in Accounting, Auditing, and Risk Management (pp. 61 – 63). ROMANIA: Business Informatics Department “Al. I. Cuza” University of Iasi Bld Copou 11 A.