Where would we be without IP?
Humanity’s potential for innovation and creativity is seen throughout the history of the human race. We only have to look at the creations that the world’s inventors and designers have created to understand how far our collective level of technological progress has been made. It’s incredible to think of all the inventions that have come before our time and the inventions that will come in the near future. It is through these creations that we prove to ourselves that existing problems can be solved through inventions and our inner human thoughts can be expressed through art. Innovation and creativity is humanity’s hallmark. It is what sets us apart from all the animals on Earth. It begs the question where would we be without intellectual property (IP) stimulating such innovation and creativity? Why IP? Because intellectual property promotes innovation and creativity through laws that protect creations, recognises creation ownership and regulates business investment or interactions with these creations. A world without IP would be a world that would be different as you would soon see by reading this article.
To begin with, intellectual property does so much with inventions through patent laws. Patent laws exist to protect inventions which are in the early stage of development by granting inventors legal ownership and protection of the invention in return for the inventor to publicly disclose the invention to the national patent office. Many inventors apply for this protection as the opportunity to get legal recognition stops them from worrying about competitors. With that in mind, inventions that we use today in our lives have at one point been protected by patents, and these inventions include inventions that save lives such as medical non-rebreather masks, x-ray machines and DNA testing protocols. Patents have also protected inventions that make life easy such as ATM machines, RFID cards and even direct manipulation of displayed content tech, you know the swipe and zoom feature on your smartphone! What’s astonishing is patents have also protected inventions that have changed society as we know it, inventions such as traffic lights, light bulbs and even home personal computers would not see the light of day without patent protections. As you can see, a world without patents would potentially be a world without these inventions as inventors would be discouraged from creating something for fear of their technology being stolen, not being legally protected or recognised as their own.
Speaking about recognition, intellectual property furthermore protects brand imagery and symbols through trademarks. Trademarks refer to any symbols, words or numbers which can be represented graphically so that it can be trademarked. The reason that people seek trademarks is to protect their business brand through legal recognition and a few other advantages such as exclusive ownership rights, recognition of product’s quality, protection against infringement and more. Most important of all, trademarks help people recognise which brand is which based on the simple imagery alone that illustrates that this symbol is this company’s branding. Because of this, trademarks as one area of intellectual property is important as it promotes legal ownership and recognition of a brand. A world without trademarks would be a world full of unscrupulous copycat business entities getting away with using a brand that is already being used by a well-known company.
On the topic of copycats, intellectual property also encourages and protects original creativity through copyright laws. Copyrights protect creators by providing them with legal ownership, protection and recognition of original creations that they make such as songs, movies, books and drawings. You see, copyright is unique in the sense that as soon as a creator makes something (that is within the realm of copyright creations!) then that creation is legally recognised as belonging to the creator. The creator doesn’t need to apply for copyright. However, many creators do so since it means guaranteed legal protection and recognition of a creation that took them figuratively speaking blood, sweat, tears, time and even money to make. Copyrights are essential in this world we live in where we have the tools, technology and natural talent of individuals to produce original content and amazing creations. It’s these creations that deserve protecting through IP’s copyright laws, otherwise, a world without copyrights would be a world wherein creativity would be filled with unoriginal copycats flooding the scene since there’s no copyright authority that exists.
As we can see through IP’s patenting, trademark and copyright arms; IP provides legal protection that can reward and incentivize creators to make original creations. On the other hand, you can also see how IP may cause problems for others through patent roadblocks, IP monopolies or IP legal powers misuse; these issues are inevitable for any area of law and they are a topic for another day. However, it cannot be stated how much of an impact IP has made to benefit society as a whole through its legal role in the development, protection and regulation of creations. Without IP and the competitive protection powers they provide, then creators may not invest their blood, sweat, tears, time and money to make a creation since other people can copy their creation with impunity and assume “ownership” for the creation. Such a scenario would be a terrible blow to creativity and innovation, it’s a surefire way stop potential geniuses in the realm of technology and the arts from making their magnum opus creations.
Because of this, IP is here to protect these creators and foster further innovation from the tech and arts community. By doing so, IP helps society as a whole advance because of the creator’s IP legally protected creation’s contributions to humanity. IP does so by energising and protecting these creative beings so that they can produce the art, tech or symbols they desire without worry. With that in mind, to answer the question, where would we be without IP? We would be left in a world without creativity and innovation as there’s no legal body of authority such as IP to enforce legal recognition, ownership and protection of original creations.
Article written by Gideon Caturla
This article appeared in the Torts Illustrated New Decades, New Horizons (2020) Publication