Giachino (00:05.0260 - 00:17.0600)
This is IP Protection Matters. My name is Renee Giachino. I'm with the Center for Individual Freedom. Joining me now is Patrick Kilbride with the Center for American Principles. Patrick, thank you so much for joining me.
Kilbride (00:17.0700 - 00:19.0000)
Thanks for having me, Renee.
Giachino (00:19.0530 - 00:34.0790)
I'd like to start, if you don't mind, by telling us a little bit about the Center for American Principles. And for folks who want to follow along and learn more about your organization, I want to encourage them to go to the CenterforAmericanPrinciples.org. Tell us a little bit about the Center for American Principles.
Kilbride (00:34.0799 - 01:18.0680)
Yeah. Thanks very much. To give credit where it's due, Center for American Principles is an initiative of Tony Zagotta, who's been a long-time leader in, you know, center-right policy circles. And Tony brought the Center to me recently and encouraged me to join as a policy fellow in order to promote principles of market economics - individual liberties, economic freedom, market dynamism, all of the different policy facets that impact our ability as Americans to do business freely and to enjoy all of the fruits of our free system.
Giachino (01:18.0959 - 01:32.0190)
So you may have just answered my first question. But I'm going to ask it anyway. Why should we care about intellectual property protections? In other words, why does IP protection matter?
Kilbride (01:32.0199 - 01:58.0430)
Great question. And it is the foundational question, right? Why should we care? Well, a lot of the work that we do as individuals is mental labor. You know, sometimes we go out and, and dig a hole. Other times we sit down at a computer and write a memo. But all types of work, whether they're tangible or intangible, deserve the protection of property rights under the law.
Giachino (01:58.0769 - 02:15.0509)
And so when we talk about tangible versus intangible. When a lot of people think of intellectual property rights, I mean, oftentimes it's simply those inventions that are patented, you know, the new drugs, the new technology, but IP extends beyond those inventions. Isn't that right?
Kilbride (02:15.0600 - 03:49.0962)
Yeah, absolutely. You know, you think about the, the memo, as I just mentioned. If you sit down at your desk and write a memo to your boss or to your clients, that is your intellectual property and it's protected under U.S. law by copyright. Whether you register or not. You do have to register copyrights and able to in order to be able to enforce them. But it is a right provided by law and it extends to all sorts of mental labors.
Now, there are limitations in current law. We have relatively narrow buckets. Patents for inventions and discoveries. We have copyright for creative works. We have trademarks for brand and logo assets. And then there's the category of trade secrets, which is, you know, proprietary knowledge that may be unique to you or to your organization and it's also protected under various statutes.
But then there's also a wealth of intangible assets that aren't necessarily protected right now. And I think as we go forward, as we see the economy increasingly dominated by intangible assets - your know-how, your skill sets that really drive the productivity of physical assets to, you know, regardless of what sector of the economy you're in. We're going to need to do even more to enable individuals to own the intangible assets that they're creating every day.
Giachino (03:50.0302 - 04:02.0052)
Patrick in anticipation of our conversation today, I had the pleasure of reading some of your works and writings. And you write about a patent ecosystem. Can you explain this to us?
Kilbride (04:02.0481 - 05:50.0730)
So we all work in an ecosystem, right? We all rely on inputs and outputs from other people. You know, and we specialize in our economy. And this is a little bit different than maybe our historical experience going back tens of thousands of years where maybe we were more individually self-sufficient. We grew our own food, we caught our own fish, we hunted for meat, we kind of did everything for ourselves. Today, we all live and work in an ecosystem where we rely on others and we contribute to others for our, common well-being. Individual rights are no less important for that reality. So when we look at ecosystems and we want them to be as successful and dynamic as possible, it's important that we always root them in those individual rights that allow us to do business together.
So for instance, one of the really thriving ecosystems in our economy is in terms of health care innovations. And you see, you know, players like the government, like universities and research labs, startups, venture capital companies large and small, as well as doctors and hospitals and patients, all playing different roles within an ecosystem that allows new and innovative products to emerge from, you know, our educational system and, and reach a patient at the end of the day.
So that's what an ecosystem looks like. It looks like a lot of people working together, even if they don't always sort of recognize that they are working together and codependent to a certain degree.
Giachino (05:51.0220 - 06:26.0929)
So you mentioned pharmaceuticals, and biopharmaceutical innovation seems to be under attack on many fronts these days. Whether that's from, you know, drug price controls to government march-ins to foreign reference pricing, global IP waivers, forced technology transfers. I mean, that's just to name a few of these attacks. How do we combat these attacks to ensure that, you know, intellectual property protections remain and continue to be viewed as something that matters to American competitiveness.
Kilbride (06:26.0940 - 08:41.0099)
I love the way you frame the question, Renee, because I do think it's important to see that whole playing field and see all of the different ways in which an industry that's producing lifesaving products is under attack.
You know, you mentioned several of them. Some of them come from outside our borders. Some of them are based in U.S. policy. But all of them weaken the ability of U.S. companies to mobilize resources to meet unmet needs. And, and that's really the critical thing that our system does, better than any other in the world, is we create the conditions where capital can come off the sidelines and be allocated to the long-term, high-risk, capital-intensive projects that really produce transformational innovation that change lives for the better in ways that, you know, we couldn't have foreseen.
And you think about all of the things that we have today. There's a new drug coming out in the market where a patient can receive this drug twice a year and it will prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS. And, you know, it's just remarkable. I mean, it's not technically a vaccine. It's a preventive therapy. But can you imagine, that we would have had this 25, 30 years ago? It really would have changed the trajectory of a lot of health care conversations. And that's just one example, among many. The biopharma industry has cured Hepatitis C for instance, or has the means to cure Hepatitis C.
So ... we talked about one industry. Let's think about energy production, let's think about climate related technology. Let's think about food production. In so many different areas, it's just incredible the opportunity we have to overcome these really technical challenges that, you know, seem like existential threats. But if we empower the innovation ecosystem, we can meet these challenges and that's what the United States has historically done better than any country in the world.
Giachino (08:41.0539 - 08:53.0340)
Our guest is Patrick Kilbride with the Center for American Principles. Patrick, what is meant by a living innovation? And why is this concept important to patent law and protections?
Kilbride (08:53.0349 - 10:39.0530)
Thanks Renee. I think, you know, living innovation is a concept that deserves more attention.
What we've seen in our IP policy debates in Washington, and maybe elsewhere in the world, is a tendency to diminish progress that, you know, is step wise. We're working one step at a time towards broader goals. And that's what I mean by living innovation - that we're creating the conditions where inventors, researchers can continue to invest in making progress.
...The courts before 1952 had established the standard of invention for patents that required "a flash of genius" - that is you had to have some idea that was just completely out of left field, surprising to everyone. And that's great if you have those flashes of genius. But even Einstein, in terms of his theory of relativity - and I'm reading a new biography about him now - his work was in effect incremental. And although his understanding was truly inspired, it also built on the work of what went before. And so it's very important that we recognize and enable the nature of innovation as a process and not a one off. Because if we if we don't provide patent rights, other intellectual property rights for that type of progressive innovation, we're not going to get the brilliant steps forward, the flashes of genius.
Giachino (10:39.0809 - 10:52.0909)
So I think you've answered this in multiple ways, but I'm just going to ask it one more time just because I think it's worth repeating. What are your thoughts on how IP protection relates to American competitiveness?
Kilbride (10:52.0919 - 12:25.0106)
I think private property rights and the rule of law are the very foundation of American competitiveness and technological leadership. You know, and it goes to empowering the individual. It's the democratization of our economy.
When you look back historically, you know, science and invention just a couple of 100 years ago were the province of wealthy Aristocrats or people who were sponsored by a royal court. And no one else could really invest their time in it, because if they were successful, somebody else would take their work. And what intellectual property rights did was make the ability to invest themselves available to many more people.
What the United States I think did extremely well - based in our Constitution, which protects and provides for intellectual property rights - is really to democratize that process. To make sure it was accessible and available to everyone so that an individual could invest their time, not as a sideline, not as a hobby, but as a means of securing a livelihood. And it's true of, you know, scientific research, it's true of mechanical invention, it's true of the creative arts. And that's really at the heart of what has enabled the U.S. to mobilize resources, mobilize capital and allocate it to these high-risk, high-reward activities that are solving some of the critical problems facing the world today.
Giachino (12:25.0455 - 12:35.0489)
Thank you so much for summing up why IP protection matters so much. One final question, Patrick. What do you see as the biggest threats to IP protection today?
Kilbride (12:35.0700 - 13:33.0185)
I think that that's a great question. And the biggest threat that I see is this tendency to downgrade intellectual property from a property right to a, let's call it a certificate of recognition. And that's being done in a very sort of deliberate and politically savvy way by interests that don't want to have to be encumbered by the rights of others. I think it's as simple as that. But the result is that ... the legal certainty and predictability of rule of law protection that surrounds private property rights in the United States is being lost in our IP system because so much ambiguity has been thrown into the space.
Giachino (13:33.0565 - 13:39.0135)
Our guest has been Patrick Kilbride with the Center for American Principles. Patrick, any parting thoughts?
Kilbride (13:39.0176 - 13:53.0331)
Well, Renee, I just want to say how much I appreciate your work. I think we need more champions of individual liberties and it's a critical time for this. And so I appreciate the chance to join you today.
Giachino (13:53.0521 - 14:07.0530)
Well, I appreciate you taking time out of what seems to be a very busy schedule to join us today. Again, you can follow Patrick Kilbride and the work of the Center for American Principals at CenterforAmericanPrinciples.org. Have a wonderful day, Patrick. Thank you so much.