Will the global economic downturn act as a catalyst for new intellectual property models? Some hope that more cooperative models will emerge encouraging innovation and greater equality. Already in the pharmaceutical industry GlaxoSmithKline plans to share patents to help find cures for rare diseases and to make patented medicines more affordable for the developing world.

  

Changes wrought by the online revolution may also quicken. Since the mid-1990s people have been predicting that the ease with which digital content can be copied and disseminated will result in it be given away for free. But even free is not enough- online content subsidised by online ads face the growing problems of price and click through rates. Further, the decline of print media, hastened by the recession, could have a profound effect on the functioning of democracy. What new models will emerge to support content? In the music industry live music is now more profitable than record sales.

 

Digitisation also poses other important questions. Who owns individuals' content hosted on social media sites? As more traces of our identity and thoughts are left online - photos, status updates and the like - who is responsible for intellectual property infringements? These questions coupled with changes sped up by recession mean future intellectual property models could look quite different. As knowledge gets more accessible, behaviours will either change (as in the live music revival), someone has to cross-subsidise the cost (the advertising model) or businesses will have to "join ‘em because they can't beat ‘em" (the pharma model). 

 

Photo: Dawn Endico

 

 

21 Drivers for the 21st CenturyTM by Outsights is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.