The Laboratory held its first major conference, in conjunction with the Skolkovo Foundation

How are we to find a balance between the interests of rights-holders and society? Is such a balance even possible, in principle? This was the key issue up for discussion at the international conference 'Intellectual Property and Innovation in the Globalized World. How to Level the Playing Field?', which was held in the Skolkovo Hypercube on April 22.

The conference was organized by the Foundation's Department of Legal Policy and Social Development, in conjunction with the recently created International Lab for Law and Development. The guest speakers included leading international experts in the field of intellectual property, world renowned professors, politicians and public figures. Some of them represented the BRICS countries - nations in the developing world which have already achieved a certain level of technological development and are now coming up against a 'ceiling' of outdated and ineffective intellectual property regimes, which are in place at both the global and local levels.

The conference was opened by the Foundation's President, Viktor Vekselberg, for whom the issue of transforming the intellectual property regime for innovation development is very close to his heart.  "Our common objective is to identify the problem areas and bottlenecks within the existing intellectual property institution, so that we can make sure that the system really works and enable people with good ideas to make money out of them. I would like to see the innovative economy, the economy of ideas, giving people more opportunities to invent things and then to commercialize their inventions".

Viktor Vekselberg's views were supported by another distinguished guest at the conference, the Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service Igor Artemiev. In the struggle to find a balance between "rights-holders' interests and the good of society", the FAS is firmly on the side of society.

As far as intellectual property is concerned, Igor Artemiev takes the matter very seriously: "We do not wish to encroach upon the institution of intellectual property, not by any means. Let's acknowledge, though, that the interests of cross-national corporations, on the one hand, and the interests of Russian business and the social sphere, on the other, are to a certain extent in conflict with one another. We often see this conflict manifested in the field of innovative medicines, where the social aspect is particularly important." Artemiev is convinced that this conflict must be resolved in favour of the social institutes in every country in the world, including Russia.

"The institution of intellectual property went in a different direction to the one which should have been dictated by the public interest and common sense. And we must now ensure that the state counteracts this!" Artemiev added.

Harry First, a professor from New York University, offered a different view on antimonopoly regulations. "In American antimonopoly law, we prefer to talk not about evening up the rules of the game, but about making the game accessible to everyone," he explained.  "This is precisely why antimonopoly regulations exist - to correct the errors made by the market. Antitrust and intellectual property are two parallel universes. By attempting to balance them out, we end up shifting the burden one way or the other."  

Harry First's views were shared by Ioannis Lianos, a UCL professor and the leading researcher at the HSE – Skolkovo Laboratory for Law and Development, who declared that a situation in which we are seeking a balance between the two categories is far from ideal: there are no competent expert institutes at the international level capable of resolving such disputes, conducting a market analysis, among other forms of analysis, and predicting how the decisions they take will affect the fate of the market.

A striking example of the 'rights-holder vs. society' conflict and of the way Russian consumers are being strangulated as a result of the protection of foreign companies' intellectual property rights is the problem of parallel imports, to which many speakers alluded.

In 2002 a ban was introduced in Russia on parallel imports - the importing of original products without the permission of these products' right holders. Foreign companies thus have control over the supply channels for goods into Russia, independently and via the official dealers.