12:20 PM Nov 13, 1996
SPIES, CRIME AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
by Vandana Shiva New Delhi Nov 12 (TWN) -- The Congress of the United States has recently passed a piece of legislation which can be interpreted as criminalising the natural development and exchange of knowledge and empowers its intelligence agencies to operate worldwide to protect interests of US corporations. The legislation empowers the intelligence agencies to investigate the activities of ordinary persons world-wide in an effort to "protect" the intellectual property rights of US corporations, by viewing such IPRs as "vital to national security". Increasing the absurdity of this action is the fact that what is often seen as "intellectual property" is information "pirated" from non-western societies and indigenous communities. Imperial power has always been based on a convergence of military power used in the defence of trade. This convergence was at the heart of the gunboat diplomacy during colonialism. A similar convergence is now taking shape around the defence of trading interests in a period of "globalization" and socalled "free trade". The British empire was built through the destruction of manufacturing capacities in the colonies, and the prevention of emergence of such capacity. Thus "free trade" during that era of "technological superiority" of England was based on the cutting off of the thumbs of master weavers in Bengal, the forced cultivation of indigo by peasants of Bihar, the slave trade from Africa to supply free labour to cotton plantations in the United States and the extermination of indigenous people of North America. It also included laws that prevented technology transfer. From 1765 to 1789, the English Parliament had passed a series of strict laws, preventing the export of new machines or plans or models of them. Skilled people who worked the machines were not allowed to leave England to ensure that England remained the industrial power. Samuel Slatter (1768-1834), who is called the "Father of American Manufacture" acted in violation of these British laws when he came to the US secretly carrying the knowledge of mechanical spinning and weaving from England to the colonies (now the US). He transferred his experience of working in the English factories to the US and built the first complete mill for spinning yarn. While the US built its economic power and manufacturing capacity by breaking free of the British monopolies, the current US Congress and the present day US corporations appear unwilling to allow this spirit of freedom so fundamental to US history and economic development to exist anywhere else in the world. Anyone following the steps of the "Father of American Manufactures" today would be arrested and jailed for 15 years or fined upto ten million dollars under a new Act called the "Economic Espionage Act of 1996". The Act was introduced in the US Congress July 1996, and passed 17 September 1996 by a vote of 399 against 3. [The Act] "Amends the Federal criminal code to prohibit wrongfully copying or otherwise controlling economic property information (1) with the intent to, or with reason to believe that the offense will benefit any foreign government,instrumentality or agent or disadvantage any owner of proprietary economic information that is related to or included in a product produced for or placed in inter-state or foreign commerce or (2) with intent to divert that information to the use or benefit of anyone other than the owner." The Economic Espionage Act takes espionage from military domains to economic domains. It redefines intellectual property infringement as a crime, and justifies the use of intelligence agencies to deal with issues of science and technology exchanges. As the introduction of the Act states: "There can be no question that the development of proprietary economic information is an integral part of America's economic well-being. Moreover, the nation's economic interests are a part of its national security interest. Thus threats to the nations economic interest are threats to the nation's vital security interests." Transfer of technology has, through the Act, been redefined as "economic or industrial espionage". Espionage is typically an organised effort by one country's government to obtain the vital national security interests of another. Scientific and technological development depend on the free exchange of knowledge, technologies and ideas: and such exchange is now being defined as espionage. The absurdity of this "intellectual property theft" becomes even more dramatic in cases where "intellectual property" is derived from the transfer of knowledge from non-western and indigenous systems to western corporations. The US corporations have "pirated" indigenous innovation and claimed it as their "intellectual property". Examples include patents on neem, haldi or turmeric, and Phyllanthus Niruti. Will the intelligence agencies of the US government be used to protect this "intellectual property"? What methods will be used to destabilise the traditional uses, life-styles and cultures in order to protect "the owners of proprietary economic information" such as W.R.Grace which owns the majority of neem patents? The Espionage Act, in a world characterised by bio-piracy carries the danger of transforming the every day activities of farmers and healers, students and researchers, scientists and industrialists into crime and espionage. What would happen if Third World countries used the same logic, and declare all bio-prospectors and ethno-botanists working for US corporations as engaged in "economic espionage" and a threat to "national security" ?