…the economies that were shining success stories of development, from the United States in the 19th century to Japan and its East Asian neighbors like Taiwan and South Korea in the 20th, took off under systems of weak intellectual property protection.
Doesn’t sound like the most exciting topic, perhaps…. but I find it interesting, the United States trying to block developing countries from doing the same sort of things it did itself in times past. However, if you want to flip that around – it sounds like England wanted the U.S. to stop abusing such protections back in the 19th c., the same as the U.S. is trying to do today. Hmm.
The global debate over intellectual property rights — patents, copyrights and trademarks — is focused mainly on forward-looking industries like computer software, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. But Americans can look back to this nation’s 19th-century experience in book publishing, for example, to understand the developing world’s viewpoint.
Back then, American law offered copyright protection — but only to citizens and residents of the United States. The works of English authors were copied with abandon and sold cheap to an American public hungry for books. This so irritated Mr. Dickens — whose “Christmas Carol” sold for 6 cents a copy in America, versus $2.50 in England — that he toured the United States in 1842, urging the adoption of international copyright protection as being in the long-term interest of American authors and publishers.
