[pp.int.general] WIPO DG mentions Pirate Party in speech to Blue Sky conference

[Amelia Andersdotter]

this is the longest rant you can possibly imagine. it's on the very 
boring topic of patents, copyrights, trademarks, data protection, plant 
breeding rights and trade secrets as tradeable goods and my concerns on 
this topic.

>      for instance,
>      intellectual property rights are very much property rights, even "firm
>      assets" (note: FIRM) that can be used for assessing the risk of giving
>      someone a loan or the security in giving someone an insurance for giving
>      someone a loan.
>
> It sounds like this is a policy of bias in favor of the copyright
> industry (among others).  That is something we probably want to
> oppose.
>

OK. The way I see this is: it is valuable to oppose intellectual 
property rights /as such/. Whether you do this by criticizing them 
individually, or collectively does not matter. The benefit of sometimes 
referring to them collectively is that they are all functioning as very 
volatile firm assets. If you have a house, or a chair, or a piece of 
land or a computer (all of which go under the label "property") you will 
know its worth, you will see that worth degrade over time, you will be 
able to establish the price or sales value of this property at any given 
moment.

With intellectual property this is not the case. Many companies have 
huge portfolios of intellectual property (often different kinds 
combined, although we are seeing concentrations of specific intellectual 
properties in specific industrial branches). The reason for this is, 
that individually those intellectual properties are worthless: they 
can't be valued. We do not know their exact worth in this moment. The 
degradation of this type of property is unstable at best and varies 
completely arbitrary, or devalues as it were. Only by "playing it safe" 
by owning such a big amount of intellectual property that they could not 
all possibly be useless at the same time can you make use of this asset.

This is also why we're seeing companies that have very similar patents 
(I would guess, it's probably more likely due to sloppe patent and 
trademark offices in such cases) for instance: one by one, they are not 
worth so much, but in the stated or estimated size and value of the 
portfolio they are very valuable. But an "exaggerated" size of a 
portfolio in one company, doesn't reduce the usefulness of an 
exaggerated portfolio in another company, so as far as the credibility 
of one company goes on the market, this really doesn't matter at all.

It works, however, this way not only with patents, but also with 
copyrights or trademarks. Trade secrets are becoming a larger part of 
global business. Data protection. In Europe we have database rights 
since 1997 which has benefitted Elsevier among other immensely, not 
because it allows them to innovate, but because it essentially gives 
them more property which they can trade or license.

Now, I see data protection and trade secrets as the two major concerns 
right now: they are "new" players in the intellectual property trade 
that i strongly oppose (regardless of under which law that which legally 
is consiered intellectual property falls). Trade secret law and the ways 
trade secrets have previously been used has been very distinct from the 
way we use patents, copyrights, trademarks. Now they are not. And trade 
secrets, as opposed to copyrights, patents and trademarks do not affect 
only external actors (a company with assets rarely sues itself) but also 
internal assets (employees or middle bosses that are suspected of having 
been uncareful). Instead of making such misconduct into a matter of 
educating or simply letting an employee go, they may now be subjects to 
lawsuits. For minor breaches.

Data protection and sales of the same are usually just a way of 
extending pharmaceutical or chemical patents. In theory they could also 
be used in other businesses, say, if you have tested a specific security 
feature (let's call it a GPL-licensed carlock mechanism with good, open 
encryption) the results of which are the condition for being allowed to 
sell it on a market. The crux here is that the code is free, and the 
encryption is free, but the demands on the marketization of these 
features are conditioned on test data which is not free, and not covered 
by the license. That example is, of course, fictional, but I do know 
that there are specific criteria that car manufacturers have to fulfill, 
and if they require testing it is theoretically possible.,

These are not the sexiest issues you could imagine, but it's somewhat 
possible that these tendencies can be "nipped in the bud".

I don't actually know how though. Therés no legislation coming up in EU 
and most of this is regulated by contract law.

/a