Controlling Knowledge And Capital By Big Capitalists Through IPR \\ Nishant Anand
We live in the era of market economy, where market gives us ideas to sustain, to live, to conquer and to die. Here, four words, sustain, live, conquer and die have different meaning for the different classes which interact with the contradiction of capital in the market centric world. Majority of the people are sustaining in this monopoly capital world, where the claim for knowledge, capital, resources are concentrating in the few hands of the global capitalist and a large chunk of people left this world to die. Intellectual property right is not the new cry of monopoly capital to monopolise the resources and knowledge. But, the expansion of it in the 21st century is enormous.
In this article, I will discuss the basic idea of intellectual property rights from two perspective. One is from the idea of market, which collides with our government policy too, and Second from the perspective of working class, which are on the disadvantageous side of this one-sided race. I would like to start my article with the recent report published on PatentRenewal.com, which released the list of companies which hold maximum patent in the world. Samsung Electronics is one of the world’s largest patent holders. In 2023, Samsung was the top patent holder in the United States, and is one of the largest patent holders in the world.LG Corporation was the second largest patent holder in the United States, with 5,156 patents.Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company was the third largest patent holder in the United States, with 4,010 patents.
The economic arguments for patents are that: (i) they are a necessary incentive to inventive industry; (ii) they are a sufficient stimulus to technological innovation and investment; (iii) the monopoly privileges granted to the patentee are compensated for by the disclosure of technical information to society. Basically, it provides a safeguard to the innovation or invention of an individual and secure the benefit transfer to the inventor or the innovator. under the guidance of WTO, TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), provides the most comprehensive economic aspects and benefits of IPR.
According to TRIPS Intellectual property (IP) can be defined broadly as creations of the human mind. Intellectual property rights (IPRs) are legal rights that protect these creations. Unlike rights over physical property, an IPR generally gives its owner only gives the time-limited right to exclude others from making use of their property, that too conditional upon certain criteria. If we read the perspective paper of TRIPS about the economic aspects of economy, we can easily analyse the real intention to propose this broad framework of Intellectual Property Rights. It states, “knowledge largely possesses the classical characteristics of a public good such as clean air, namely non-excludability and non-rivalry. It is difficult to exclude anyone from using it once it is provided, and one person’s use of it does not diminish another person’s use of it. In these circumstances it is difficult to see how private actors would invest in the creation of knowledge if they cannot capture the returns from their investment in order to recover costs, since others can freely benefit from their efforts once the knowledge is public. This situation would lead to chronic underinvestment in the creation of knowledge, or in other words, markets would fail to produce it in socially optimal quantities.”
What holds the basic idea to WTO is investment. That huge chuck of capital is being invested by the global big capital players to monopolise the knowledge through patents, copyrights and other methods. I am correctly emphasizing the word monopoly, because this mechanism of IPR has given all the power in the hands of big players and there is nothing like perfect competition we can imagine. Third world is being sidelined systemically in the lure of investment in its area.
Because of third world dependence over big capitalist for the capital investment, our governments are compromising with the big players and giving all precious resources in the hand of monopoly capital. This is a new kind of tactics which imperialism had developed after second world war, when the scope of direct intervention diminished finally. That’s why, it is neo-colonial tactics but not the entire regime of different imperialism. Geographical Indications (GIs) often disproportionately benefit big capitalists in the Global South (third-world countries) rather than the local producers they are intended to support. This disparity arises due to structural inequalities in the global economy, power imbalances, and the exploitation of local resources.
Large corporations often dominate the supply chain and buy raw materials or finished products from local producers at low prices. Locals rarely share equitably in the profits despite being the custodians of the traditional knowledge or craft.Local producers frequently depend on intermediaries or multinational corporations to access broader markets, reducing their share of earnings. For example, In the tea industry, GIs like “Darjeeling Tea” may protect the brand, but plantation workers and small-scale farmers often receive meagre wages while big exporters reap substantial profits. The most effective aspect of this whole framework is the brand value. Big corporations often invest in marketing GI products globally, monopolizing the economic gains while relegating locals to low-value activities like farming or primary processing.
In prima facie and the documental proposal of Intellectual property rights of WIPO (World Intellectual Property Rights), WTO or Indian IP laws show a clear picture of benefits to the locals. But, in reality, the maximum profit is being snatched by the big corporates. The process of high-level unequal distribution takes it’s pick at the stage of value addition, when most of the value addition work of GIs are being done outside the local area where the GI tag has been given. The highest value-added activities, such as packaging, branding, and global distribution, occur outside the local context, often in richer countries where the big corporations are headquartered.
How an established and running economy of locals can be dismantled entirely? If we want to know about it, we need to understand the concept of intellectual property rights. Local producers lose control over their own heritage as corporations dictate production standards and marketing strategies to maximize profits. Ultimately, in the effect of Intellectual Property Rights locals lose their ownership and pray of global big players. GIs perpetuate a system where third-world countries remain primary producers of raw materials, while corporations from developed countries extract the major share of economic benefits.
