Brazil: Home of Samba, Carnaval, and Rapidly Modernizing Intellectual Property Regimes

Globalization is a funny thing from the American perspective, I think. For years now, I’ve heard all manner of hyperventilating from corporate executives about how wonderous globalization will be because it will open up new markets. “There are a BILLION Chinese, you know, all clamoring to buy our stuff,” or so the conventional wisdom goes. Oh, and by the way, they can’t wait to share our values.

Then, once global markets are improving the economies of these growing nations, we start to freak out that they are able to produce, for example, more engineers than us.

EEK! The rest of the world won’t be living in dirt huts, sending off their best scientific talent to live in San Jose or New Jersey! My word, after 50 years and billions in foreign aid, some of these industrializing countries are actually…industrializing!

That’s right America, they won’t just be taking manufacturing jobs for textiles and vacuum tubes. There are billions of people out there who want to do more than lug bricks up the side of a hill or tie together sneakers in some factory. They want industrialization to bring an industrial way of life.

That’s why it’s so interesting to read articles such as “New Report Finds Brazilian Bio-Medical Industry is Advancing Thanks to Reforms in Innovation and Intellectual Property System.”

You remember Brazil:

Carnaval. Caipirinhas. Samba. Bundas.

Today, they see themselves as the home of: biotech, micro-arrays, and genomes.

Brazil has caught on to the idea that even if you have local talent to fuel a science & technology base, nobody will be starting companies and creating jobs if they don’t have a way to protect their investment. So Brazil has been working closely with the World Intellectual Property Organization to create a new IP regime that will support innovation.

It’s working. In June 2005, a Brazilian drug company named Ache released the country’s first innovative pharmaceutical product, an anti-inflammatory cream under the trade name Acheflan. The company initiated product development after Brazil reformed its patent law in 1996 and later filed for Brazilian and international patent protection. The drug is also an interesting mix of local and global: the active ingredient was discovered based on knowledge of the medicinal properties of local herbs, and now will be sold globally.

The point here is that we will see more competition from unlikely places as different countries modernize their legal systems. They have the scientific talent, and soon many will have the infrastructure to compete on a global scale.