05.12.2015lmk bio 05 samfunnsperspektiv og ipr 1 1-introduction the roots of intellectual property...

18.04.23 LMK BIO 05 Samfunnsperspektiv og IPR

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1-Introduction The Roots of Intellectual

Property Rights, IPR

Basic Fundamentals for the IPR-Concept

and some background for the development to obtain laws on IPR,

Lars Monrad-Krohn

The Roots of Intellectual Property

• First we observe that Inntellectual Property is a special form of Knowledge, and we touch on the measurement and transmission of Knowledge

• Then we examine the concept of Investment and ownership, and the development of a culture that fosters the concept of Inntellectual Property Rights

• We observe the stages in development of the western civilization, the Nordic democracy, the trade liberalism and market forces.

• We finally observe that IPR protection in the form af Patents is closely connected to a liberal market philosophy as developed in the western civilization


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Knowledge is the general form of IP

• Old norwegian proverb: ”Knowledge is Power”

• How can Information become power?– How is knowledge beeing sold to earn money?

Schools and Educational Establishments sell knowledge, but how about other sellers?

– Education gives knowledge, skills, attitudes and work habits

• What is the value of Information?.– Sale of Information is dependent on the situation, (also

on TRUST?), and it is difficult to show it before the sale is done!


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• Knowledge

Measurement and transmission of knowledge

• How is information (knowledge) measured?”

• Shannons law: Information is measured by the negative logaritme (power of 2) of the probability that the event beeing reported should occur.

– A 50% event occuring can give rise to an information amount of log2 of 0.5 which is ½. . 2**-1 is ½, so this information amount is 1, which again is named 1 bit in the computer language

• Transmission of Information is Communication,

• the speed of which is measuret in bits/second in the ICT-language

– The so-called ”BANDWIDTH” is limiting the speed of communication, and is measured in maksimum bits/second in transmission speed for the channel.

• How about human communication capabilities??18.04.23 LMK BIO 05 Samfunnsperspektiv

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• Knowledge

Simple Concept:Capitalism is Investment with a

Return• Investment is giving up some immediate

pleasure in return for some later rewards. • Here is a short story:.

– The Stone-Age Man is out gathering dry wood for his camp-fire, but it goes slow in finding and breaking off dry tre-branches

– Next time he takes a rest, he makes an Investment by instead of resting, taking time to make a stone axe. It takes him two extra days of delayed rest or playing with the children. (It is said that the stone-age-man only needed to work 4 hours a day for his living)

– He renounces something and must delay some of his own need satisfaction.


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• Investment

Short investment story ending– Next day he gathers the triple amount of wood in

the same time.– He has obtained a return on his investment.– Some time later he makes an agreement with

the nabouring family about lending out the axe in return for one quarter of the wood beeing gathered.

– We assume that both families are bound by ethical rules about keeping a promise as part of a deal, if not by law, probably not existing in the stone age.

– Øksen er blitt en del av hans kapital som gir ham avkastning

– The axe has become a part of his Capital giving him the equivalent of Interest


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• Investment

Is it possible to invest in knowledge?

• Next day the Stone-Age.Woman goes out searching for wood (with the axe)

• She suddenly by intuition climbs some new places outside the well-trodden path, and discovers a new valley with very large recources of dry wood.

• Even with some extra climbing, the walk to the valley was only half of the previous route to the woods

• She returns with a lot of dry wood and ponders:– #Can I make a deal with the nabouring family by telling them about

the valley and in return receive every tenth piece of wood they gather?”

• Har de to partene en kultur, samfunnsstruktur, (juridisk maktsystem) og etikk som gjør dette mulig?

• Does these two parties have a culture, society structure, and ethics to make such a deal possible? (Not to speak of a Law System with an Enforcement Power)


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• Investment

Cultural background for IPR.

– A well-developed judicial power-system and/or a strong ethical power is a prerequisite for the developing nations that want to take advantage of the dealing with IPR

– Find out if there is a correlation between the standard of living and the density of lawyers in nations at different development stages.


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• Culture

Historical Background for development of IPR

• It seems natural for us to think of the StoneAgeFamily as someone who shared the work. Most probably was the family (tribe) the basic community, where everyone everyone worked according to capabilities and skills, and where everones comsumption was according to needs and rank..

• Exchange of gifts (goods) or the more developed trade, was probaly developed later. (Although archeologists claims to have found traces of a large scale production of flint axes in Denmark)

• Could it be that there had been both competion and cooperation at the same time?

• IPR was probably not recognized, may be not even the concept of ”Property” to be ”owned”.

• When in the development of our western world did the concept of Property, and of Intellectual Property appear?

• Was IP present in the Roman Empire?


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• Culture

4 Stage community development

• In the Nordic community development, the stages were:– 1 Gathering, Fishing and Hunting– 2 Cultivation af land, domestic cattle and

Farming– 3 Industrial production of goods– 4 Large scale Service provisions

• All 4 stages associated with an increase in the size of the organization involved

• Patents may have been a prerequisite for stage 3, and general IPR a prerequisite for stage 4

• What is the next stage and what is the prerequisite for this stage?

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• Community

7 Stage development of the economic unit of communities

• The economic unit progressed through:– 1 Family– 2 The large farm– 3 The small kingdom– 4 The national kingdom– 5 The national democracy– 6 The supra-national democratic organizations– 7 Global interrelationships in

• economic conditions, • environment and • multinational companies

• Patents were developed in stage 5, and work is now underway to harmonize the different national principles involved: a prerequisite for a productive Stage 7


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• Community

Develpment of the Nordic Democracy• The minor kings mobilized the farmers inside their small kingdom, provided them

with weapons but no training. They fought with the enemy army at certain suitable battleplaces, very unprofessionally and according to traditions.

• As a general rule, the largest army won the battle• If an army clearly was less than the army of the opponent, they quickly fled the

battlefield. This saved lives, and the workforce were needed on the farms.• When it was realized that it was mostly the numbers that counted, and the

development of the kingdom came to the point where farms and the number of soldiers could be estimated, this number became crucial for negotiations between the conflict partners.

– Who could decide that each party gave true numbers?

• Taking time to meet at the battlefield, fight and lose people, seemed not to be intelligent, when it after all just was based of the number of soldiers mobilized.

• The intelligent way was of course to save travel time and human lives by just counting the number of available farmer-fighters and compare the numbers on both sides. And deciding: The party with the largest numbers had won!

– This may explain why slaves and women in past times had no voting rights.• This pattern seems to lack in the development of civilizations in Asia,

Africa and the Middle East, with the possible exception of Japan.


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• Community

High esteem for human lives may be connected to harsh climates

• This democratic development was possible in a culture where the major ”enemy” had been nature itself, and where each life was essential for the further development of the settlements. – (In about year1400 more than one third of established

farms in Norway were abandoned)– In Switzerland country-wide voting on important issues

are still beeing used. One might also say that Switzerland has a harsh nature compared to warmer countries. (in the Middle East etc.)

• In the warmer countries they have more a tradition of a ”ruler” taking place of the ”Ting”, and with dramatically more power to the ”ruler”


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• Community

The former kings of Norway had limited power, but made laws designed to better the conditions for the growth, prosperity and advancements. (from year

500 till about 1800)

• Old norwegian traditions for solving conflicts between two parties were the periodic assembly of the farmers, called ”Ting”– A good speech at the Ting could be decisive for the vote of the

majority, like a Lawyers court speech.. • Ownership was a fundamental concept, and the ownership

to the most important resource those days, the land and forest and fishing rights, were documented very early.– There were official royally supported documentation on who

was the owner of which piece of land, with royally marked stones marking the outline of the grounds

• When was the first patent awarded in Norway?


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• Law

Understanding the forces in the field of Patenting

• Competitors in a marked will always strive to obtain a largest possible markedshare, if not a monopoly, and they will almost always use any legal means to delete their competitors presense in their marked.

• To have competitors can makes life more difficult, one may have to change porducts, prices and modes of operation. Since the human beeing is stronly influenced by habits, che change of these as a result of competition is painful.

• If a company has a virtual monopoly, the forces for improvements are weakened, and company difficulties can be pushed over to the buyer by charging higher prices.

• For the majority of western governments it is important to avoid business monopolies, as long as they are privately owned, and special measures are often taken to ensure a reasonable market competition. (For the benefit and freedom of choice for the consumer)

• Check ut ”Liberalism” vs ”old time soviet planned economy”• Who has in practice the reins on a state owned monopoly?


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• Community

Monopolies are unwanted, why give a Patent to an inventor?

• The definition of a well functioning competition in a marked implies a ”suitable” number of competitors, most of hem earning an ”apropriate” ROI. (Return On Investment)

• A well functioning competition also implies freedom of choice for employees and customers, a high degree of marked innovations, and in theory, the lowest possible customer prices.

• Why is it then that governments will award a monopoly on the exploitation af an invention?

• Example of bad functioning monopolies:– Government monopoly on health care services in Norway (As opposed to the

system in Singapore)– Microsoft Windows OS-monooly (attecked by EU and some states in the USA)

• Example of succsess in fighting monopolies for increased competition– The norwegian liberalization of the trade with electric power, now spreading to

EU and USA– Norwegian governmental body for competition surveiance. (Konkurransetilsynet)– US break-up of Rockefellers ”Standard Oil” into several smaller companies.– US and EU court action against Microsoft to prevent them from bundling a

browser in their OS, thus making it virtually impossible for others to compete in the marked for browsers. (Look at the fate of Netscape Inc.)


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• Law

IPR = Intellectual Property Rights

• Is it fair to be paid for work done ?• When a single person makes something with his inntellect,

i.e. with his mental capacities, and it gets documented, then it is fair that she shall retain ownership to the results of her efforts

• På området ”tekniske anordninger” gis det av ”samfunnet” en tidsbegrenset enerett til kommersiell utnyttelse av en dokumentert teknisk anordning i form av et ”Patent” (Enerettsbrev)

• In the field of technical contraptions, the government will award a time limited monopoly on the commercial exploitation of a technical invention in the form of a Patent on certain conditions that vary from US to EU and among different countries.

• It goes without saying that old civilizations like China may not have developed the patent institution.

• For other fields than the technical, other laws are developed.


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• Law

Recognition of IP ownership• This recognition of private ownership is developed in the

Western World, and about to accepted by other cultures in Asia and the Middle East– Indonesia recently opposed the international

understanding of the patent institute in allowing local production of some pharmaceutical product (Aids-vaccine?) without royalty payments.

– Norwegian Patent Law text states that under certain conditions, the government can force a licence usage for a Patent. (with a reasonable licence fee)


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• Culture

IPR and Law

• Taking Patents as an example, the skills and institutions involved are as follows:– Patent Awarding Institution (PAI)

• Preparations of a Claim for Patent is done by the Inventor with the possible assistance af a patent Atterney and prsented to the Patent Awarding Institution

• Engineers in PAI examine the claim, and may award a Patent

– Courts, national Law instituions• Can overrule the PAI• Will decide in conflicts

– Thus understanding IPR involves understanding Law in a very high degree

– Police• Will enforce the decisions of the Court


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• Law

Summary• IPR is a concept closely related to the development of the

western civilazation, in term a recognizing:– Ownership in general– Qwnership of immaterials– Investments with subsequent profit from an asset owned in

general– Immaterial property as an asset– Market Liberalism with competition as opposed to a monopoly– Concept of a Patent Monopoly awarded by a national Government

as a compromise between Market Liberalism and a timelimited Monopoly, as an incentive for making technical innovations

– ”Globalization” may lead to conflicts with those societies that have not the same cultural background. (And still have a highly developed culture with high tecnical capabilities, i.e China, Japan)


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05.12.2015lmk bio 05 samfunnsperspektiv og ipr 1 1-introduction the roots of intellectual property...

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