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Every year on April 26th, World Intellectual Property Day focuses our attention on one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century—protecting both the ideas that lead to the innovations that improve all of our lives and protecting our citizens from the harmful effects of using products that have been illegally, and often improperly, pirated.
When intellectual property rights protections fail, the results can be deadly. During a meningitis epidemic in Niger in 1995, more than 50,000 people were inoculated with fake vaccines, resulting in 2,500 deaths. Thirty infants died in India in 1998 and 89 Haitian children died in 1995 from cough syrup prepared with a toxic chemical used in antifreeze. The 1989 crash of a Norwegian aircraft was blamed on a fake bolt in its assembly-- fifty-five people died.
“Intellectual property rights” is a fancy name for product accountability and the protection of human creativity. It’s the legal mechanism – through copyright, patents and trademark – that ensures that the products we buy are genuine, reliable, and safe and that the creators of those products are rewarded for their ingenuity, thus encouraging them and others to create more.
Why should we care about protecting intellectual property? At the dawn of the 21st century, 70% of global economic output is generated by services, many of which depend on new and evolving technologies. Global GDP grew twenty-fold in the last century – from $2 trillion to $41 trillion and most of this increase was due to innovation. In 2004, the World Economic Forum reported that the 20 countries perceived as having the most stringent intellectual property protection were among the top 27 countries in terms of economic growth competitiveness. In contrast, the 20 countries perceived as having the weakest intellectual property protection were among the bottom 36 countries in economic growth.
Simply stated, in a world where ideas form the common currency, intellectual property piracy erodes a country’s economy and its cultural identity. Unfortunately, in Mexico, it is not unusual to find pirated copies of a movie being sold on the streets days before it is released in the theatres, thus diminishing the Mexican cinema industry. According to some statistics, 8 out of 10 movies, 7 out 10 musical CDs, 3 out 10 electrical devices, 3 out 10 bottles of wine and liquor, and 6 out of 10 TV cable connections are pirated. This environment of illegality is not conducive to improving the Mexican economy, developing new ideas and technologies, or creating a secure society for Mexicans.
For this reason, President Calderon last March said, “We have clearly distinguished our challenges, but at the same time, we must clearly consider the solutions each one of them represents … and obviously we are fighting piracy and boot-legging with all our might. I am personally committed to this conviction: neither industry, nor the economy, nor even a society, can develop properly with the foundation of illegality.”
The governments of both Mexico and the United States are working together closely to combat the increasingly sophisticated organized crime networks that operate large-scale piracy and counterfeit operations, both bilaterally and with our Canadian friends under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. We are committed to this cooperative effort because our citizens all stand to lose if the laws that safeguard the creativity and hard work of our people are not respected.
Information and communications technologies, safe medicines, and the other innovations that make all of our lives better and form the backbone of our economies are only possible because of intellectual property rights and ideas. The hope we all have for a better future depends on those inventors and innovators who will make the world better – if their creative ideas and hard work are protected.
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