Scenario 3 : Intellectual Property will be customized

2007- Conflicting demands

The first problems, with respect to globalization, already have occurred when search results in Google China had to become censored. This issue will become more difficult when the role of intellectual property wants to become globalized. The aim of intellectual property is to share information and knowledge for the sake of global cooperation. But this goal is not achievable when we reconsider that we already have problems with contradicting demands of sharing information.

In China, people have a different demand for privacy; they demand more privacy. This is because the ethnical values and the culture differ from those of the Western countries. What people in the West describe as opinion expressing when they want to discuss a homosexual marriage, will not be appreciated in Arabic countries, where this kind of marriage is forbidden in their religion. Or people in India don’t want to discuss the process of slaughtering a cow, because a cow is seen as a holy animal in India. The government in China has forbidden their people to discuss political sensitive issues as the Chinese oppression in Tibet in 1949. But in the West, you can find all the information about this sitiation on the internet. So based on the culture, norms and values, religion, politics, sex and gender, the demand for privacy differs all around the world.

2008- Problems occuring at every level

This kind of contradicting demands or this kind of contradicting willingness to share, will not only occur on ethnical, individual or political level, but also on multinational or business levels. Multinationals will not be too eager to share their intellectual property with competitors, and not at all when they believe that this is the information that provides them of their competitive advantage. Also, when discovering about new technology or solutions, they don’t want to share this with their competitors, because competitors could use it to come up with better ideas and their vendors and customers can see this as a weakness.

2009- Increasing lawsuits

All of these conflicts, will only increase the number of lawsuits all over the world for the next 3 years. Businesses or developers suing each other, because they feel that confidential information has been copied and applied in another business or by another developers, or people in two different countries feel that they aren’t treated respectful by outsiders or that the outsiders (from other countries) invade their privacy.

2010- The solution: Brokers

Finally the solution will come up. The solution for this problem is that intellectual property becomes customized in each country. For this customization, different laws and regulations will be determined. To coordinate the different laws and regulations between and in different countries, brokers will play a part. This kind of new business will emerge for specialized brokers who have the knowledge of legal issues of customized policy, regulations and laws of the use of intellectual property. These brokers will determine when is it legal or not to publish something. The government will play a part here, because the law will be different and will be applied different in all countries and a whole new set of policies and regulations have to be made as the outcome of this business. The technology to support this all is already available, but there is another type of security to track people who mis-use information or who brake the law. To support this, a greater emphasis will lie on tracking people to punish them.

2011- Customized intellectual property

Intellectual property is commonly customized in each country and at every level. Furthermore, it is always up to the individual/ business to indicate what they want to share and what not. And above that, the information is filtered per country at every level.

Conclusion: IP customized worldwide

The rules of intellectual property differ in the world and intellectual property will be customized up to a certain extend to specific country laws. This results in continuous customization, cause it’s a dynamical environment where law’s, culture and individual values continuously change and differ.