Rediscovering the value of intellectual property rights: how Brazil's recognition and protection of foreign IPRs can stimulate domestic innovation and generate economic growth *.

• Author: Kogan, Lawrence A.

Abstract

The industrializing economy of Brazil possesses many favorable competencies and capabilities owing to its cultural diversity, its growing technological know-how, wad its expanding entrepreneurial class. It also boasts a number of intellectual property-rich companies in the life sciences and information and communication technology sectors whose capacity for innovation has yet to be exploited Brazil, however, suffers from a deficit in core human capital and lacks a market-friendly enabling environment that incorporates strong intellectual property right protections. These deficiencies have largely prevented Brazil from developing the cutting-edge indigenous know-how and commercial innovations that could dramatically improve Brazil's future scientific, technological and economic growth prospects.

Unable to resolve its national dilemma itself, the Government of Brazil, has worked alongside numerous developing countries and activist civil society organizations within multiple international fora to promote a new global knowledge paradigm. Such paradigm discounts the value of private intellectual property rights in promoting innovation, and calls for scientific and technology-based knowledge and information, and the commercialized products and processes derived from it, to become, as a matter of international law, 'universally accessible, 'open source', and essentially 'free of charge' to emerging and developing economies, i.e., 'public international goods'.

The following article documents Brazil's...