Propiedad Intelectual

La propiedad intelectual, como todos sabemos, es una coas que esta en mucha discusion, Cds, DVDs, remedios, este es un interesante analisis y dice mas que lo que quiere decir en cuanto a la evolucion de la industrializacion.

The second industrialization model - powered by IP harvesting
- Gordon Housworth [ 7/27/2006 - 13:27 ] #

"Piracy" has become a very imprecise term in describing the risks and impacts to Intellectual Property (IP) in what we call the second industrialization model. We track a four tiered model of IP violation that is marking the progression of newly industrializing states:

1. Simple piracy (copy with no effort to hide piracy - the audio/video model that applies to anything replicable from CD and DVD)
2. "Badged" substitute (pirated or stolen Intellectual Property used to create a product masquerading as a legitimate offering by a legitimate supplier)
3. Substitute product (pirated or stolen Intellectual Property used to create a "no name" or "new name" product competing with a legitimate offering, usually on price)
4. Supplier substitution (original legitimate supplier is forced from the market, replaced by the copier)

While all four are IP theft, we have bowed to convention in the popular press to describe the first as piracy while reserving the other three as IP theft, especially as the theft is masked such that the sellers have distanced themselves from the theft.

As a heretofore internal working term, we call this the second industrialization model, the first being textile manufacturing. Although the French perfected large textile looms, their output was craftwork for a limited clientele. It was left to the English to turn looming into a mass production affair. The US purchased old, discarded looms, copying them down to their eccentrically worn bobbins to commence the colonial industrialization. Nation after nation subsequently followed suit for well over one hundred and fifty years.

We see the codification of a new industrial model in the postwar period based upon "commercial on commercial" Intellectual Property (IP) attack. While the earlier "military on military" or state on state espionage remains vibrant, a significant focus has shifted to advancing dual use technologies which bring both military advantage and domestic commercial industrialization.

Within this model, nations in a position of strength, specifically in innovation - part of which is acquired without royally, normally do not want IP protection laws as they are either independently innovating, thereby able to sell at a premium; producing more efficiently, thereby driving down costs over competitors; or imbedding surreptitiously acquired IP and thereby terminating the revenue streams of competitors. Nations tend to seek or support IP protection laws when they are in decline by some combination of an ebbing of innovation, emergence of lower cost producers, or new producers harvesting their IP and ending expected revenue streams.

The postwar Japanese model tracked this progression and is only now promoting IP protection laws in the face of Korean and Chinese successes in former Japanese core industries. The Chinese are expected to accelerate the model significantly. The downside for firms and industries affected is that China (and I started my commercial visits in 1980) is unique among developing nations in having a "first world" mentality even as it had a "third world" industrial capacity, i.e., from its "reopening" in the 1970s, it closed off industrial penetration and investment that it did not like (which most other industrializing nations could not or would not do) as it turned a benign eye on virtually any domestic industrial effort that nurtured growth, revenue and industrialization. How it achieved the IP required to do that was never questioned.

As is widely known among skilled China watchers, edicts on IP infractions, or anything else, often rarely leave Beijing as provincial, city and enterprise zone mangers do largely as they wish and are tolerated so long as they bring growth and revenue without significant embarrassment to the Party (CCP).

Firms that do not understand this landscape and industrial progression are ripe for IP harvesting. Moreover, legal remedies are largely ineffectual and the rewards moot as the IP is already lost and all expected downstream revenue is attenuated. Readers may wish to examine Low cost is not low risk: realities of IP Loss for realities on the ground.