Assignment 11- Part 2

Ted talks- Johanna Blakely

Hey everybody,

This post will be a summary and analysis of the TED talks that Johanna Blakely gave. She primarily talks about the difference between a very strict and coercive patent system such as for drug manufacturing opposed to a looser patent system such as the one used for the fashion industry. She gives the pros and cons of each and ultimately argues that having a looser system is overall better for the individual companies and economy in the longrun.

She primarily looks to the fashion industry for her examples of a lax system. The USPTO does not issue fashion patents because it is seen as too utilitarian to be patented. An example of this mindset is that what if you patent a shirt, can I not then wear a shirt without paying you? Europe has some different laws, but in practice they still end up being very loose with regard to fashion, and that is why knock offs exist in such high numbers.

She talks about how stealing of these ideas does not overall negatively effect these companies because the market of people buying legitimate Gucci and Prada are very different from people buying knockoffs. Also she looks at the numbers of how the fashion industry has soared over the past years under this lax intellectual property system. She also points to the fact that it forces fashion designers to be more constantly creative.

My main counter argument to her contention is that fashion takes a pen and paper to design, where as for much of new technology it takes a large initial investment in R&D to make anything. As a result having more lax patent laws with regard to hardware or IT would discourage R&D investments. Overall I think she brings up a good point, but to argue that patent laws that work for one industry must obviously work for another industry simply seems naïve to me.