John Paul Phelan (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Devins, and I welcome this opportunity to have this discussion on intellectual property rights. I did not realise that the Commissioner for Internal Markets and Services, Mr. McCreevy, is responsible for this whole area. The Minister of State praised the Copyright and Related Rights Act. Nevertheless, there is a body of opinion that there should be greater protection for intellectual property rights in Ireland. There has been much litigation on intellectual property in other jurisdictions, such as Australia and the United States, in recent years. The Feist Publications Inc v Rural Telephone Service case changed the interpretation of intellectual property in the US and there was a knock-on case in Canada, which led to a reinterpretation of Canadian law on intellectual property.

The Minister of State referred to intellectual property as dealing with creations of the mind, inventions, literary and artistic work, symbols, names, images and designs used in commerce. This area is dealt with by the WTO under the trade related aspects of intellectual property, TRIPS, to which the Minister of State referred. Intellectual property is divided into two categories, industrial property, which includes inventions, patents, trademarks, industrial designs etc. and copyright, which includes literary and artistic works such as novels and plays, films, musical works and other artistic works. Intellectual property plays an important role in an increasingly broad range of areas, ranging from the Internet to health care to all aspects of science, technology and literature and the arts. Understanding the role of intellectual property in these areas, many of which are still emerging, requires significant new research and study.

Strong protection of intellectual property rights allows companies that create something original to benefit from the creation through the granting of a patent. This allows the company the sole use of the creation for a set time, which is generally 20 years. A patent prevents others from using the invention until the patent has expired. Patented protection means that the invention cannot be commercially made, used, distributed or sold without the patent owner's consent. These patents' rights are in force in a court which, in most systems, holds the authority to stop patent infringement. Conversely, a court can also declare a patent invalid upon a successful challenge by a third party. Strong protection serves as an incentive for creating new works. The creation is protected under law and the creator can benefit financially from his creation. On the other hand, weaker protection allows more companies to benefit from a creation. This can be achieved through a reduction in the length of time of a patent or a change in the way a patent is granted, such as only allowing patents for certain types of inventions. If protection is too weak there is less incentive to devote time and resources to research. If a company cannot recover the initial investment it would be less likely to undertake costly research.

One of the more controversial areas covered by intellectual property is HIV and retroviral drugs in Africa. Many poorer countries cannot afford to pay the high costs of these patented drugs and want to be able to make generic copies. Drug companies claim that this is infringing their rights and typically they looked to the WTO to enforce their intellectual property rights. The subject is particularly contentious and has not been addressed but it will come to the fore.

Another contentious area is file-sharing on the Internet, particularly down-loading music. Ireland does not have much regulation in this area and there is a need for more regulation of the Internet and greater protection of copyright, particularly in respect of websites. In respect of reforming the Copyright and Related Rights Act, we should examine a minimum level of creativity. This stems from the Canadian case to which I referred, where Canadian law has changed to require a minimum level of creativity in order for an item to be protected under intellectual property protection. There is a case for similar legislation to be introduced in Ireland. There is a need to reform the Act in respect of further strengthening the protection of copyright. The Minister of State said that, in European terms, Ireland is seen as having particularly strong copyright protection. Some think we should have stronger protection.

Arising from a recent foreign case, there is a need to introduce the defence of parody so that an item cannot be declared original and therefore is not protected under intellectual property rights if it is a parody of something that has existed before. Therefore it is not infringing the copyright of the original item. There must be greater protection of educational facilities and libraries with regard to copyright protection. It is fair to argue that the patent registration process must be simplified and made less costly.

I briefly mentioned patentable drugs and I have particular and strict view on copyright protection and the protection of intellectual property rights. There is a humanitarian element to the issue in terms of developing new drugs. I am thinking particularly in terms of the difficulty with anti-retroviral drugs such as those used to treat HIV. There is a humanitarian case to be made that patents in those instances would have different time limits and perhaps would be open to other drug companies to make cheaper generic forms of the same drug.

There is also the patentability of computer programmes and copyright in that regard, which has been brought to my attention. We must have some form of standardisation introduced globally in that area as such a measure does not currently exist. There is also the regulation of trademark domain names for political and corporate entities because this is not currently sufficiently regulated either. I previously mentioned file sharing, whether it is a person downloading music or movies from the Internet. There is a whole new world pertaining to the Internet and how we deal with protecting people's intellectual property rights in that regard.

I recently did some research on the subject and there was a recent debate within the European Parliament, with it rejecting a European Union directive in the area of intellectual property rights in 2005. The Minister of State referred to a subsequent directive from 2006. Perhaps I am just confused but would the Minister of State shed some light on that subject?

It is fair to state that Ireland has pretty good copyright protection. Under the areas of health care provision, such as the drugs I mentioned earlier, and Internet file sharing, a significant body of work is required. It is nine years since we enacted the legislation and with technology in particular, everything changes so quickly that there is a danger our protections will become outdated very quickly. The Minister of State in his concluding remarks may be able to shed some light on that subject to indicate the Government's thinking on Internet protocol rights into the future.