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In your considerations, this committee should be aware of what Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has to say on intellectual property rights.

If you view minutes 24:00 thru 30:00 in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzhD7KVs-R4

You will hear his discussion of the inefficiency of intellectual property rights and the justification of monopoly power via IP to motivate innovation. That is the crux of what this committee must consider when it tries to re-write Canadian copyright law.

Stiglitz warns: If you do not get IP right, you can have all the disadvantages while getting none of the advantages of IP laws.

He points out that early development of airplanes and automobiles was delayed by IP laws and goes into detail to point out that WWI with the US government stepping in to break the patent is what finally allowed the technology of aviation to develop.

He mentions that a famous Canadian company, RIM, was forced to pay $600 million to get IP rights that were unlikely to be sustained in court, but which because of business needs and the timeliness of the market, RIM was essentially forced to pay as a "ransom" to be allowed to continue with its technological innovation.

He also points out that Canada wisely stood aside from the patenting of genes arising from the race between publicly funded researchers and private business in the Human Genome Project. The social value of having a private business cherry pick genes a few days or months before it would have been done by the publicly funded research means that a number of medical treatments are now held hostage to "IP rights".

The above emphasizes that this committee needs to be very, very careful in its deliberations. Yes, some protection of copyright is needed to ensure innovation. But don't assume that simply setting in place a "copyright law" means that the incentives will be achieved. The past shows that too often the creators are pushed aside by large financial interests with the resources to manipulate the legal system to milk the public for their private enrichment with no significant benefit flowing to the true originators.

Yes, provide copyright, but make sure it is tied to the inventor and is not separable by law so that big companies can snap up rights and then exploit them to the disadvantage of the Canadian public as well as the person or persons who created the intellectual property.

I am:
Richard Yates
Richmond, B.C.