DEVELOPMENT: Corporate Control of Technology Stymies ‘Knowledge Revolution’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Peter Zirnite

WASHINGTON, Jan 16 1997 (IPS) - The system of patents that now allows multinational corporations to control developments in computers, telecommunications, and other technologies should give way to a different set of protections for intellectual property, development analysts say.

Argentine economist Graciela Chichilnisky says developing countries will fail to take full advantage of the opportunities presented by technological advances as long as multinational corporations continue to take control of these advances through the use of patents. She describes patents as “monopolistic tools” that “only increase inequality.”

“More property rights must be given to the poor,” she told a development conference here this week. She proposed that patents be replaced by a system of licensing that would be flexible enough to allow all countries access to technology, regardless of their finances.

Technological advances must be accessible to everybody, says Chichilnisky, a professor of economics at Columbia University in New York. She spoke here this week at the International Development Conference, a non-governmental organisation which meets here annually.

Chichilnisky, however, argues that the rapid pace of technological developments will make it increasingly difficult for big corporations to control all advances. Interestingly, many technological developments are led by small firms and individuals. These pioneers — who are also exploited by corporations — would be natural allies of developing countries in the fight to change the current system, she asserts.

While conceding that this “is a very tricky issue,” Chichilnisky is confident that “this is where the opportunity is.”

Others say that any change in the protections of intellectual property would require a major political battle, since corporations will not easily abandon a system that has provided them billions of dollars in profits.

Gustavo da Fonseca, vice-president of Conservation International and professor of ecology at the University of Minas Gerias, Brazil, was less optimistic. “There is a huge difference between the real world and intentions,” he says. “This would be a political decision.”

The global convention on biodiversity that emerged from the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, he says, underscores the magnitude of the battle developing countries would face in attempting to change the system of intellectual property rights. Facing pressure from U.S. corporations who view the convention as a threat to their patent rights, the U.S. Congress has yet to ratify the accord.

In the meantime, rapid technological advances have created a “radical shift in the global economy” under which resource- intensive growth is being replaced by economic development based on knowledge, Chichilnisky says.

“Knowledge-intensive growth is the sunrise of the world economy,” she adds, noting that health, biotechnology, telecommunications, and other technology-dependent fields have become “the most dynamic sectors in the United States and the world.”

This technological revolution, Chichilnisky argues, has created the opportunity for countries to follow a development strategy which “uses knowledge, rather than capital, as the most important input of production.”

She points to the development of the computer software industry in India. In 10 years, she notes, the country has become “one of the largest software exporters in the world,” shipping out about 1.2 billion dollars in software annually.

But even if developing nations are successful in obtaining access to technology, they still face problems that could create the type of environmental woes they are seeking to avoid, warns Pierre Lasserre of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

He points out that much of the new biotechnology is untested, and introduction of its products, such as genetically engineered plant species, into the environment could have disastrous results. Developing countries “must be careful that these discoveries don’t turn against them,” Lasserre cautioned.