[b]Establishing an IP culture is something that can, and must,

Establishing an IP culture is something that can, and must,
involve all of us.

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Intellectual property rights and economic development
JP/6/KARIM

Part 2 of 2

Intellectual property rights and economic development

Makarim Wibisono
Geneva

It is important to perceive intellectual property (IP) not as
an abstract concept, but as an economic asset that can be
developed, accumulated and managed, exactly like real estate,
personal property or capital.

Accordingly, most developing countries have for some years
been actively engaged in updating their legislation or creating
new ad-hoc laws to cope with this necessity. However, they are
late starters. The industrialized countries have been availing
themselves of IP rights and elaborating or fine-tuning relevant
legislation for decades.

This not only gives them a huge technical lead but also
presents a challenge to the intellectual, cultural and artistic
assets of the vast majority of developing countries. Equipping
itself with more effective armor, so to speak, and getting up to
speed with the installation of such defenses, are therefore
prerequisites of survival for the developing world.

For optimal results, collective, cooperative and concerted
efforts are, in my view, the best way forward. In this regard,
ASEAN provides the most obvious regional structure within which
individual countries can develop and expand their IP strategies
and programs.

Its cooperation with WIPO goes back almost 15 years to the
early 1990s, when an Ad-hoc Working Group was created to look
into the questions of IP cooperation. This initiative in turn led
to the signing, in 1995, of the ASEAN Framework Agreement on
Intellectual Property Cooperation in Bangkok. Other important
milestones have followed almost every year since and much has
been accomplished in the field by all member countries, with
favorable results.

At the Seventh ASEAN Consultation held in May 2001, the use
of IP as a tool for development and wealth creation in the
context of an increasingly integrated ASEAN region was discussed
at length. It was agreed that, properly utilized and managed, IP
could contribute to national and regional growth.

Increasingly, ASEAN member states were seeking more
information on the practical means of using IP to enhance
economic growth, and WIPO was asked to translate these ideas into
concrete and practical steps that would enable ASEAN countries,
individually and collectively, to benefit from the use of the IP
system.

A series of studies have been carried out by WIPO in
conjunction with member countries in order to monitor and assess
the efforts of individual countries. Individual needs and areas
of concern have been identified. Problems are being remedied. And
methods to develop an intellectual property "culture", as well as
to systematically integrate IP into the economic strategies and
policies of the region have been defined.

From all points of view and whatever the approach chosen, be
it technological, industrial or cultural, one thing is clear:
every country needs to have a strategic plan as an essential
starting point for effective and successful progress in the field
of IP.

Strategic planning tends to occur in the context of a specific
economic development plan, or in the context of economic
activities. In this regard, Indonesia has made great strides,
with a scope of application ranging from the long-established
Indonesian "Biodiversity and Biotechnology Development Project",
which has been running since the 1980s, to the modernization plan
advanced more recently by the Directorate General of Intellectual
Property Rights, which contains a clear statement of objectives
that relate to the use of IP as a national economic tool.

At the same time, an extensive network of university and
research institutes has been put in place in this country to
develop the necessary human capital to implement our policies
relating to IP.

The importance of aligning human capital development with
intellectual policy is a prime concern among ASEAN countries. In
other words, educational priorities must reflect national
economic, technological and IP development plans. Unless a
capacity to educate technologists, scientists and creators in key
technological areas exists, a strategic IP plan cannot be
successfully implemented in practice.

Likewise, public awareness is essential to IP asset
development. The ASEAN countries understand this, but they also
realize that this awareness is still too low, that public
relations campaigns must be conducted to demystify IP and bring
it down to the level of the street, so to speak. Education, at
all levels, is the first and key component of success in
spreading an IP culture.

In this regard, NGOs, collective management societies,
cultural societies, trade associations, and others have an
important role to play in socializing the concept, providing
training, helping with business networking and generally
stimulating domestic inventiveness and innovation.

In other words, discovering what IP is all about, explaining
how it works, and generally spreading an IP culture is a
collective exercise, which engages the whole of society. This is
the important point I want to stress: Establishing an IP culture
is something that can, and must, involve all of us.

Finally, we need to work hard and to fight to develop the rich
assets that make us unique and different. The things that make
our art and culture, our folklore and traditions so sought after
by the foreign business people and tourists who flock to our
countries.

In a globalized world threatened by uniformity, let us be
different and creative and let us learn to protect this
individuality and creativity. But it will not happen unless we
work at it constantly. In our efforts to develop our assets and
to learn to protect them, we need to strongly believe that we can
do it.

It is a matter of willpower, of learning, and of ingenuity --
and we have plenty of all three. We must now actively campaign
and infuse the blood of the troops with a fervent passion for IP.
Let us constantly educate, promote, advertise and remind
students, artists, researchers and businessmen that they are part
of a great movement to develop their countries and enrich them
through their assets.

These assets that are coming out of their brains and their
imagination, let us protect them so that they can be instruments
of prosperity. Let us establish, nurture and live out the IP
culture. Success is about enthusiasm! Let us therefore activate
the energy within our people and show the young and those who are
young at heart that value is indeed relative and that the world
is full of possibilities for their talents, ideas and culture.

What is important is that we continue to create, to research,
to think, to appreciate, to harness, to see, to sense and to
dream. For each time Indonesian hearts, souls, and minds reach
great heights in innovation, creativity and talent, it is the
very rights that we are working on today that will look after
them.

The writer is an Ambassador/Permanent Representative of
Indonesia in Geneve. This is a personal view.