Re: [Fsfe-uk] Call for Evidence on Patents, Copyright, Enforcement, Competition and SME access to services

[Alex Hudson]

On Mon, 2011-02-21 at 12:26 +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> Before we blunder into this minefield without a map, would anyone like
> to offer hints and tips about what would be best to submit?

Well, quite.

The call for evidence is a relatively nice feature in theory, but
probably not favourable to us in practice; the issue is always whether
or not the base of evidence is representative.

For one thing, the whole purpose of IP is generally to proprietise
something: the people with the figures (financial or otherwise) are the
people doing the proprietisation, who are undoubtedly going to be of a
pro- leaning.

Equally, it's very difficult to look at the hypotheticals of a
situation. To work out the benefit (or not), one has to examine the
opportunity cost, which is entirely a hypothetical exercise. 

So I would suggest that the only people who have any figures worth
looking at are the ones spending money on IP processes, and doing the
big money deals: no-one else is really going to track this kind of
economic impact, but the pro-IP lobby will have plenty of "£X invested
with IP protection, £(X*Y) generated as outcome" as case studies at the
very least. So there's probably going to be good evidence in one
direction, and virtually none in the other.

It would be very interesting to see if we (collectively) could actually
do some research in this area, but it's never going to happen in the
time-scale set out for this call, even as a literature review.

Cheers,

Alex.


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