Zia Qureshi maintains there need to be an overhaul of the intellectual property (IP) regime, which is unsustainable in an “increasingly knowledge-intensive economy.” The 21st-century global economy will differ from that of the last century - patent rules used to reflecte “the long-held assumption that strong protection provides an essential incentive for businesses to pursue innovation.” Today,

it is an economy of ideas, knowledge and information, which will account for a growing share of output, in both developed and developing economies.

Is IP defensible? Petra Moser and Heidi Williams, “find little evidence that patents boost innovation.” Instead, they “lock in incumbents’ advantages and drive up the costs of new technology.” Often the IP regime is “associated with less new or follow-on innovation, weaker diffusion, and increased market concentration.” As a result a “growing monopoly power” is being created, that leads to “slowing productivity growth, and rising inequality in many economies.”

The author urges lawmakers to “democratize innovation” and help create an environment that allows entrepreneurs to try out and disseminate new ideas, and promotes healthy competition. He mentions Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles, who criticise “copyright and patent laws” in the US, saying they “look more like intellectual monopoly than intellectual property.” Indeed, excessive protection of IP is said to be “a barrier to innovation and its diffusion.” In recent years these concerns “have gained greater salience now that knowledge has emerged as a dominant driver of economic activity and competitive advantage.”

The Fourth Industrial Revolution had in recent decades created an “intangible economy” based on digital technologies – “soft assets like algorithms and lines of code, rather than physical assets like buildings and machinery.” Given these circumstances, IP rules “can now make or break business models and reshape societies, as they determine how economic gains are shared.” But the developing world is pushing back against the IP regime, that aims to maximise gains for a few, rather than global development and welfare for the many.

Critics say wealthy countries have sought to impose a “one-size-fits-all approach” on the world, by influencing the rule-making process at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and forcing their will by means of trade agreements. In their view the IP standards advanced countries favour typically are designed not to promote innovation and scientific progress, but to maximise the profits of big corporate companies and others able to sway trade negotiations. Large developing countries with substantial industrial bases – such as South Africa, India and Brazil – are leading the resistance, which takes aim at the most visible manifestation of IP injustice: the accessibility of knowledge and ideas.

The author says “patents also invite considerable lobbying and rent-seeking.” An increasingly dense “legal thicket” in a world of inventions requiring thousands of patents means to stifle innovation or keep competitors at bay. Astronomical proportions of the budget spent more on lawyers than on researchers. R&D incentives are often directed not at producing new products but at extending, broadening and leveraging the monopoly power granted through the IP rights.

No doubt the federal government had in the past played a crucial role in helping invent the Internet, develop Google’s basic search algorithm, or key features of Apple smartphones. But it must also play a role in reforming the decades-old patent system, investing more in R&D by direct funding, and promoting innovation through financial incentives – tax relief, grants or prize. Although R&D should be seen as a public good, governments are reluctant to get involved and leave it to the private sector, which is more profit oriented. The author says it is a wrong attitude, and he urges them “to give taxpayers a stake in such profitable outcomes from publicly supported research, not least to replenish public R&D budgets.”