| 来源类型 | Article |
| 规范类型 | 评论 |
| The economic value of intellectual property | |
| Kevin A. Hassett; Robert J. Shapiro | |
| 发表日期 | 2005-10-01 |
| 出版年 | 2005 |
| 语种 | 英语 |
| 摘要 | For the complete paper, please go here Introduction Knowledge and ideas have always been the vital force in economic development. The natural resources available today in the United States and the entire world – arable land, usable energy sources and minerals, animal life, and so forth — have existed for decades or centuries. Only successive waves of intellectual and practical innovation have enabled America and other societies to use them productively. In the same way, all of the constituent natural elements used to build today’s most advanced supercomputers or treat infections have existed for decades or centuries. It took generations of ideas, building one upon another, to turn those elements into technologies and medical treatments that can change a nation’s economic prospects. The power of ideas to drive economic development and growth is evident throughout the world. Economists have long known that economic innovations have been a more powerful force in determining how fast U.S. productivity and output grew during the 20th century, than either increases in capital investment or improvements in the skills of American workers. Moreover, the current value of the intellectual property which embodies those ideas — from computer software and musical recordings to patented pharmaceuticals and information technologies — is enormous. We estimate that U.S. intellectual property today is worth between $5 trillion and $5.5 trillion, equivalent to about 45 percent of U.S. GDP and greater than the GDP of any other nation in the world. While new technologies and new ways of doing business usually are developed in advanced economies such as the United States, their transfer to other societies has been a key factor in the rapid modernization of the world’s most successful developing nations, most notably the Asian Tigers and China. Both parts of this equation for growth and productivity – the development of innovations that help raise output and incomes in the advanced nations where they originate, and their transfer to developing nations where they also help drive growth and higher living standards – depend vitally on respect and protection for the intellectual property embodied in every innovation. Over the last generation, economists have established a series of findings that demonstrate the vital importance of strong intellectual property rights. As we will see, research has established that intellectual property protections in developing societies, especially countries with low per capita incomes, directly encourage technology transfers from more advanced economies through both direct imports and foreign direct investment. Moreover, technology transfers to developing nations expand as those nations strengthen their patent protections. Data also show that intellectual property protections in developing nations can directly stimulate the pace of innovation in advanced countries. Conversely, researchers have found that countries with weak intellectual property protections receive less direct foreign investment; and the investment they receive is less technologically sophisticated. Moreover, the advanced technologies and products which multinational companies transfer to those developing markets that protect intellectual property rights often diffuse to domestic firms, increasing the rate at which those firms and their countries develop their own intellectual property. Given the enormous value of economic innovations and the intellectual property embedded in them, it is not surprising that the underlying ideas are often stolen by those who pirate or counterfeit patented or copyrighted technologies and products. The Organization for Economic Development (OECD) has estimated that counterfeiting and piracy costs companies as much as $638 billion a year, losses greater than the total GDP of all but 12 countries. Around the world, between 35 and 40 percent of all commercial, packaged software and musical recordings sold every year are thought to be counterfeit. Among patented products that are more difficult to duplicate, such as drugs, electronics and semiconductors, the counterfeit rates are lower but substantial. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that at least six percent of the pharmaceuticals sold worldwide every year are counterfeit, valued at more than $30 billion. In some nations, the vast majority of the software and musical recordings sold are counterfeit versions. More than 90 percent of the recordings sold in China and Paraguay are pirated; and the market shares for counterfeit software are more than 60 percent in Latin America, more than 70 percent in Eastern Europe, and nearly 90 percent in Russia. In addition, experts in pharmaceutical piracy have found that counterfeits account for up to 50 percent of certain drugs sold in China and Pakistan, and more than 10 percent of the entire markets in other Asian countries and Russia. Despite the critical economic importance of intellectual property rights, since 2001 the U.S. government has taken virtually no action against countries which tolerate wide-scale piracy and counterfeiting of American technologies and other products. From 1996 through 2000, the United States filed 15 cases with the World Trade Organization (WTO) for intellectual-property violations; but from 2001 to the present (September 2005), the U.S filed just one new case. The U.S. government has also taken no action in response to the Brazilian government’s unprecedented move to unilaterally abrogate patents for three new pharmaceuticals. Given both the extent and costs of all of these violations, and their long-run implications for economic growth and development in America and around the world, the international community along with the United States should take aggressive measures to strengthen global enforcement of intellectual property rights. |
| 主题 | Technology and Innovation |
| 标签 | Innovation ; Intellectual property ; patents ; technology |
| URL | https://www.aei.org/articles/the-economic-value-of-intellectual-property/ |
| 来源智库 | American Enterprise Institute (United States) |
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/241473 |
| 推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Kevin A. Hassett,Robert J. Shapiro. The economic value of intellectual property. 2005. |
| 条目包含的文件 | 条目无相关文件。 | |||||
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