The economics of intellectual property

Lloyd Stanbury, Contributor

Paulwell

MINISTER of Industry, Commerce and Technology Phillip Paulwell and his team must be commended for a job well done in the recent staging of Intellectual Property Week.

I think the week's activities have contributed to increased awareness about intellectual property rights management among our legal practitioners, the creative community and users of intellectual property products here in Jamaica.

Having contributed to this increased awareness however, it is now incumbent on us, both government and private enterprise, to take the critical step of putting in place the domestic institutional framework necessary to ensure that Jamaica experiences a net positive inflow of income from intellectual property rights management.

Unless steps are taken immediately to see to the establishment and proper management of business institutions to support local music creators, performers and producers, we will find that our recent efforts at upgrading the legal infrastructure for intellectual property rights management will only serve to benefit overseas entities such as the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Business Software Alliance and the members of other similar entities worldwide.

During Intellectual Property Week, there were some very clear signals sent by such entities which should be cause for grave concern. These include the announcements by Microsoft and the Motion Picture Industry Association with regard to their intent to aggressively pursue the matter of piracy of their intellectual property within Jamaica.

Now that Mr. Bruce Lehman, President of the International Intellectual Property Institute, has joined us in the local music fraternity in pointing to the significant economic potential for Jamaica's music, maybe we will see a renewed and enlightened approach by both government and the private sector. Mr. Lehman noted that there is need for the establishment of business institutions to serve local music creators. Over the past thirty years, the private sector interests in the music industry have demonstrated a clear inability to pull together these business institutions on their own. While we move forward in our efforts to upgrade our legal infrastructure in compliance with the WTO and the TRIPS agreement, we need to place equal and possibly greater emphasis on facilitating the development of the business institutions to which Mr. Lehman refers. Without these institutions, our efforts to comply with the WTO and the TRIPS agreement will be to the benefit of entities like Microsoft, the Business Software Alliance, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of Jamaica.

For too long we have been taking the approach of waiting on our music industry players to establish and manage the necessary institutions. This approach has not met with much success. Can we really afford to continue to sit back and say to our music industry players, "You guys need to get organised". Our music industry players do not possess the administrative skills to set up and manage the necessary business institutions. There is also a glaring lack of understanding among government representatives on our local business and legal administrative personnel with regard to the "on the ground" workings of the business of music. Hence the continued cry for music industry players to organise themselves. The level of organisation required is sophisticated and specialised, and the economic benefits from intellectual property rights management will not come to Jamaica without the establishment of these business institutions manned by knowledgeable administrators. Our music offers the best prospect for global earnings from the use of intellectual property. We need to take the next step which is to ensure that the necessary business institutions are established immediately and staffed with knowledgeable administrators.

What are these institutions? We already have in place the Jamaica Association of Composers, Authors and Publishers (JACAP). We however need agencies representing performers rights and the rights of producers of sound recordings. To establish these agencies is the first step, but there is need to have in place experienced music business professionals to function as administrators.

There is also need for dialogue between our national agencies and similar agencies worldwide and for government and/or diplomatic intervention in places where our music copyrights are being exploited such as Brazil, Japan, Europe, the Caribbean and North America. Like Microsoft and the Motion Picture Association of America, we in Jamaica need to move into those territories overseas where our intellectual property (music) is being exploited without financial returns to our creators and take steps to properly monitor and collect the income being generated.

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