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The international community needs to ask itself whether current forms of intellectual property protection are appropriate for the needs of the developing world, says Kamla Persad-Bissessor, minister of legal affairs for Trinidad and Tobago.

According to Persad-Bissessor, in the rush to appear developed, developing nations may have emphasized the acquisition of consumer durables rather than building the infrastructure that could have sustained further development. In doing so, she says, they took on the products of the research of developed nations without doing the research themselves, often feeling free “to borrow, copy and plagiarize the knowledge of developed nations”.

In developed countries, she points out, the growth of intellectual property protection occurred alongside technological and other developments. But, in developing countries, intellectual property protection has in a sense been imposed by the need of the first world to protect its interests.

“This provides an interesting challenge to the legislators of developing nations, to ensure that model legislation provided obligingly by the world Intellectual Property Organization is appropriately tailored to the needs of the local creators and inventors,” said Persad-Bissessor.

Speaking at a workshop organized by the Caribbean Academy of Sciences, she said that certain provisions might have to be modified, or new areas of protection developed within the legislation, to meet the need for development.

Full text: http://helix.nature.com/wcs/c11.html