Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Actually...

One risk of blogging is that I often think of something just after pressing "Publish Post" ;)

Following up on my last post regarding Michael Geist's comments on CETA and copyright - an interesting question is whether there is a difference in the historic linkage between trade and IP between patents and copyright - i.e. is the linkage between trade and patents different from that between trade and copyright?

It might well be different. I've read a lot about the history of international agreements in patents - but a lot less wrt copyright. Historically, "industrial property" (patents and trademarks, mainly) and "intellectual property" (copyrights etc.) were regarded as separate categories by many people - with industrial property being, well, more important to industry, who are also tied heavily into international trade relations. That distinction has blurred a lot, but the international strategies of the copyright-industries were distinct from those of the patent-industries until some time approximately late 70's/early 80's. (apparently, the patent-industries had to persuade the copyright-industries to buy into a multilateral approach that culminated in TRIPs - and at some point the copyright-industries had to get on board or get left behind ;) ).

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