Protect Or Plunder?: Understanding Intellectual Property Rights, by Vandana Shiva

It's no secret that I am an outspoken critic of present copyright and patent law, so when I found this book in Guyana, I couldn't pass it by. This book review has been pushed to the side for the last week as various things have come up in the Caribbean. Within the pages of 'Protect Or Plunder?: Understanding Intellectual Property Rights', Vandana Shiva takes the reader on a tour of the reality of intellectual property - providing facts and cases on the present laws which are said to be necessary by those who profit from them, and are questioned by those who don't. She leaves little room for speculation, cramming more facts in 146 pages than WIPO can shake a stick at.

Consider the first mammalian patent in 1988 by DuPont (a mouse) to John Moore being known as Patent 4,438,032. Imagine that. Imagine someone having the exclusive rights of your spleen.

Then there was the attempt of the U.S. Government to patent the Hagahai (no Wikipedia entry yet)people of Papua New Guinea, which was finally dropped in 1996 because of global outrage - the patent itself was challenged by physicians and activists in Europe, and finally revoked in 1999.

She also describes some of the things which are specific to India in the Introduction to the book, and also lets us know some things about herself:

...For the five years between 1994 and 1999, each time the Indian government has introduced WTO-related laws, the patent debate has been the hottest issue in the Indian parliament. Even though the deadline of 1 January 2000 for implementing TRIPs is over, the conroversy over patents is still alive and will continue to rage in this millenium. My [Vandana Shiva] engagement with the issue of patents and IPRs began in the mid-1980s with the emergence of the new biotechnologies and the patenting of life forms, and the introduction of IPRs in the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations. My abiding concerns for ecology and equity have been the basis of this engagement with patent laws. As an ecologist dedicated to conservation of biodiversity and reverence for all life, patents on life I believe pose deep ethical problems with far reaching consequences for humanity and other species...

From the perspective of an ecologist, Vandana Shiva describes the very same things that the World Trade Organization and WIPO would have us all believe are very clean cut issues, while demonstrating within every page that there are numerous dilemmas for developing nations with regard to 'intellectual property', and in doing so serves to be a guide in the muddied waters of patents, copyrights and trademarks. These issues are larger than software.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough, from the average person who knows nothing about 'intellectual property' to the experts in the field.

Read this book.

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