Democratising Knowledge: Transforming Intellectual Property and Research and Development | Common Wealth

Executive Summary: The current public health crisis is demonstrating how deficiencies in our approach to intellectual property (IP) – a unique set of rights and protections that applies to the creations of the human intellect – and research and development (R&D) imperil the health, safety, and livelihoods of millions of people around the world. As has happened all too often in the past, the choice to prioritise corporate profits and an exclusionary version of IP rights and R&D over affordable medicines and medical supplies is proving not only to be deadly, but also threatens to dramatically increase economic, geographic, and social inequality.

While originally intended to stimulate innovation by protecting ownership of knowledge and creativity, the current approach to IP has increasingly become a driving force for the accumulation and protection of assets by a narrow set of multinational companies and elite interests. Moreover, the incredible rise of intangible assets such as IP rights has become a defining feature of contemporary, financialised capitalism and a crucial source of control in an economy that increasingly values data, brands, algorithms, and proprietary software.[1]

This current approach has resulted in sluggish rates of innovation, increasing economic and racial inequity, and reductions in competition, among a host of other deleterious outcomes. Because of this, calls for IP reform are becoming increasingly common across the political spectrum. 

Relatedly, R&D has increasingly been directed towards private interests and private profit in recent decades, resulting in reduced public spending on R&D as a percentage of GDP, the creation of a system of double taxation whereby consumers pay for public investments in innovation and then again through excess costs for products and services, and a reorientation of R&D spending (both public and private) towards maximising profits, rather than alignment with pressing social, economic, and ecological needs.   

The rationale driving this approach to IP and R&D is that private ownership, market forces, and profit (supported by public subsidies and tax breaks) incentivises innovation and efficient resource allocation, stimulating economic growth and job creation. But this does not stand up to evidence. Instead, by allowing these critical systems to primarily benefit private interest and corporations, we are failing to equitably develop and distribute products and services, adequately compensate workers and taxpayers, and maximise and stimulate innovation to address the intensifying and intersecting crises we now face.  

In place of this, we need a new approach to the conceptualisation, design, and implementation of IP and R&D; one that recognises how critical these interconnected and entwined systems are to building a more equitable, sustainable, and democratic 21st century economy.  

To do so, we recommend extending and embedding principles of democratic public control and ownership over IP and R&D, as well as reforming corporate behaviour, to reverse encroachment and expand the public commons. This includes:

• Moving towards a public knowledge commons approach to IP rooted in the principles of public ownership and equitable access; 
• Ensuring that publicly-developed IP is held for the public benefit;
• Increasing public research and development (R&D) with a focus on public benefit, addressing the intersecting economic, social, and ecological crises we now face, and confronting increasing global threats to humankind (such as climate change); 
• Challenging corporations and monopoly power by linking public ownership and control of IP and R&D with efforts to increase competition in various economic sectors and diversify the ownership structure of enterprises and services (including cooperatives, publicly owned enterprises, and sustainable local and regionally based companies); 
• Boosting workers’ rights and empowerment by giving workers a voice in new IP and R&D systems and institutions and removing IP rights and protections from companies that abuse workers;
• Centring global solidarity and reparations (including technology transfers) to acknowledge and redress the role of the US and UK in extracting wealth, knowledge, and resources from the rest of the world (primarily the Global South) through centuries of colonialism, enslavement, and imperialism. 

In order to see these principles embedded, we suggest a series of policy proposals that can guide a new approach to IP and R&D in the UK and the US. 

First, we need to grow public investment in socially and environmentally beneficial research and development to meet the needs of the future. This must entail reversing the declines of recent decades (relative to GDP) and increasin