Question

6. Governments take measures to protect intellectual property rights. Are intellectual properties private goods or public goods? What should we protect and what should we share?

Answer 1

Governments provide intellectual property rights to innovators to promote innovation and give benefit to innovators to recover his cost of innovation and also to make profit out of it in order to be encouraged to innovate further.

Intellectual property rights(IPR's) are generally provided in the form of patents to give exclusive rights to innovators to produce and sell that product, governments around the world rewards the innovators in the form of patents to public their innovations/ creations for public good and their benefits with consideration of affordability of the same innovated products and services to the public/ for public good. Intellectual property rights are private goods when granted to the innovators/creators in the form of patents for their exclusive rights to produce the same for a limited period, generally for twenty years and governments asks the innovators to make public their innovation for the public good without fear of copying or re-produce since their innovations/creations are protected by them though patents, copyrights, etc. and this makes them a public good since sharing of innovation for public good, for welfare of public for the benefits of the public at large since public goods are non-rivalry in nature. Governments in order to ensure affordability of innovations/creations to public at large can give compulsory licences to other entities to produce the same goods with certain riders in order to make available the same to masses. Intellectual property rights are granted in such a way that they don't give indefinite exclusive rights to innovators to produce and get benefit out of that but are granted for limited time period and them after that time period same makes available to everyone in the market in order to make the same public and for benefit of all.

it is also to be noted that innovations are highly subsidised and they get support from government and its funds which are basically public funds and so public has the right with some extent to access the same with consideration of benefits of innovator/creator of that product and service.

Innovations/creations should be protected but its benefits should be shared to public and access to them on affordable prices in order to have access of the same innovation to masses and innovation should be protected for some time period, i.e. 20 years as is the case with almost all countries and then same innovation should be made public for benefit of all and also innovation should be made accessible and affordable by giving compulsory licensing.