Intellectual Property Rights, Up Close & Personal

The class discussion last week reminded me of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) issues that I witnessed on a practical level during the ten weeks I spent in Bangkok this summer. Thailand has been included on the Priority Watch List of the annual Special 301 Report conducted by the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) for the last 18 years since 1994, and was again listed this year as a Priority Watch List country.

Everyday on my way back to the apartment, I passed by street stall after street stall selling various boldly displayed pirated DVDs and counterfeit products. Giant shopping centers were filled with countless vendors selling everything from illegally duplicated cell phone chargers to hard drives packed with the latest films. Through my internship in Bangkok I learned that IPR violations not only steal the jobs of those devoted to their industry, but can even take a deadly turn. Counterfeit medicine can harm those who were misled by labels deliberately made identical to a globally recognized brand. Fake tires claiming to be of quality proven by a brand’s legitimacy cause fatal accidents that take the lives of unsuspecting victims. Of course, IPR protection is not an issue only Thailand struggles with. But my time in Bangkok this summer gave me a glimpse of the practical manifestations of IPR violation and brought to surface three issues inextricably linked to finding a solution to protecting intellectual property: identification, enforcement and accessibility.

As I briefly mentioned above, many victims of faulty counterfeit goods are unaware of the illegitimacy of the product. As IPR violations spread to the likes of pharmaceuticals, car parts and even small mundane items like batteries and chocolates, no longer can we simplify the issue as an attack on a deliberate downloader. Methods of effective identification must be implemented and exercised by everyday citizens for positive progress to be initiated on the issue of IPR violations.

Enforcement and measurement is another issue. Regardless of the countless policies and initiatives a government can undertake, enforcement at the practical level must be strategic and effective for the policy to hold water. Occasional raids that only chip at the tip of the iceberg and better serve symbolic publicity purposes must be improved. Methods of measuring results and progress within a broader, national context of the issue are undoubtedly critical to improving enforcement effectiveness.

Finally, addressing the issue of accessibility will prove to be another hurdle in making progress toward IPR protection. For those whose only source of watching a show they’ve been dying to watch is the streetside vendor selling pirated DVDs, and even more so for those whose major source of relatively reliable information about the world beyond their borders is through pirated channels, the issue of Intellectual Property Rights becomes complex and murky territory. To what end, and for whom must Intellectual Property Rights be protected and enforced will remain a lingering and controversial question, and recalling my experience in Thailand has only confirmed that I too am far from equipped with cure-all answers.