On April 26, the World Intellectual Property Organisation and the international community will observe the ninth annual World Intellectual Property Day to raise international awareness about the importance of intellectual property to our wellbeing.
This year's theme, "Promoting Green Innovation," emphasises the importance of intellectual property (IP) to advancing the development of green technologies and eco-friendly products that support a healthy environment and promote sustainable agricultural and economic development.
We are in a period of heightened concern about both climate change and global economic crisis. Historically such challenges have sparked innovation, presenting new opportunities to benefit from intellectual property. By encouraging enforcement of trade rules, including intellectual property protection, we can support innovative industries, create new jobs and solve global challenges.
-- April 26 is World Intellectual Property Rights Day. Creative individuals and industries continue to generate solutions to some of the most difficult problems that face the world today. Intellectual property protections help foster environments in which creativity and innovation can thrive and contribute to economic development and improved quality of life around the world.
Recently, Brazil has undergone a Green Revolution, dramatically increasing agricultural production. Investment in research, technology transfer, and the use of new technologies has been essential to this success. For example, a soybean variety breeding initiative with the United States helped Brazil become a major soybean producer. New technology allowed farmers to minimise the turning of the soil before planting a new crop, decreasing erosion.
Crucial to the development of these new technologies is the intellectual property protection provided in both Brazil and the United States. On a quest to improve the vision of a billion of the world's poorest people by 2020, Oxford University physics professor Josh Silver invented a pair of eyeglasses that people can adjust on their own. Provided for free, this invention helps the disadvantaged who have only limited access to an optician.
Silver has already delivered some 30,000 pairs to disadvantaged individuals in 15 countries and ultimately hopes to distribute 100 million pairs around the world each year. Efforts are also underway to streamline the design of the eyeglasses and make them more widely available by decreasing their cost of production.
Through the UN Development Program's Transformation of Rural Photovoltaic Market Project in Tanzania, local entrepreneurs are helping bring affordable solar energy systems to rural areas. In one example, Zara Solar Ltd sold 3,600 stand-alone systems, helping supply electricity for lighting, mobile phone charging and electricity to 18,000 people.
Despite the strong benefits that these solar technology systems bring to health centers, schools, businesses and individual households, low quality imitation products sold at small electric shops threaten to hurt their reputation. Zara Solar is working to educate consumers about the importance of purchasing legitimate systems so that the authentic brand name products are not discarded due to false perceptions that they are low quality.
The Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation Inc (AIDFI), a Philippine non-governmental organisation, took a pump first developed in 1772 and improved it by creating a design that uses locally-available replacement parts. As of May 2007, 98 of the new pumps were installed in 68 communities, providing clean water to villagers living on hillsides, who previously had to climb down steep slopes to collect it from a river or stream.
This innovative pump uses the best of the original version, but simplifies its maintenance with easily replaceable parts accessible to technicians in the local villages. Pakistan is increasingly becoming more technologically advanced, and as such is tied ever more closely to the global community and environmental issues that face people world-wide.
There is a general recognition in Pakistan that a robust and vibrant intellectual property rights regime will promote innovation that betters the lives of Pakistanis throughout the nation. Innovation is at the heart of civilisation. The pursuit of new knowledge is at the center of human spirit and is what led Thomas Edison to invent and develop technologies like the light bulb.
The US IP system allowed others to build upon Edison's work by granting him patent protection that allowed him to reap financial benefit for his significant contribution to society. We must ask ourselves: Who are the Thomas Edisons of today? Where are they? And, how do we ensure that IP protections are in place to encourage their innovative spirit and support the safe and secure distribution of technologies to those who desperately need them?
In his inaugural speech, US President Barack Obama reminded us that "our minds are no less inventive" and "our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year." As we work to address global challenges such as the current international economic crisis, climate change and clean energy, we must redouble our efforts to encourage and protect intellectual property rights and foster a robust environment for global innovation.
(The writer is Charge-d' Affaires, US Embassy, Islamabad)
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