18/09/2023
We have gone from the industrial age, where we built huge machines and factories. Now, we're in the information age, where we create new ideas and new technologies, and those things are less dependent on manufacturing and tangible objects and much more based on the ideas and the intellectual content within them. Now, almost all the major companies, in one way or another, are intellectual property companies. They do enormous work surrounding Intellectual property rights, whether patents, copyrights, or trademarks. Hence creating an enormous amount of stress on IP rights. How will these keep up with technological change and, even more importantly, Economic change? Is the law keeping up with the ongoing advancement?
Now, technology has changed, the economics have changed, and business models have changed, so we should think about some alternatives to the expensive IP rights registration and enforcement for future benefits. We should work for the greater public good, e.g., ‘free software,’ which is software as a public good. We should look towards IP alternatives that are viable and less costly for the business. For example, trade secrets can be used as an alternative to patents, and open source work can be used as an alternative to copyright work because it creates a collaborative development ecosystem with “better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in” according to the Open Source Institute. Likewise, private subscriptions can also be used to gain profit for the business and benefit the public. Many organizations are now following this private subscription strategy and earning profits. we generate the incentives we need at lower social costs and also create a balance amid IP rights. Hence, we could stimulate the behavior we want to get more invention, innovation, and creativity without incurring all the costs and complexity of the IP system. The question is should our Intellectual property laws need to be revised to cope up with the need of time?
