A global crossroads boasting young, tech-savvy populations and far-flung trade connections, Southeast Asia is well positioned to become an economic hub. But to do this national governments must first lay the groundwork by embracing policies designed to foster innovation and the knowledge economy, or risk getting stuck at the in-between stage of basic manufacturing and commodities exports, both dangerously reliant on cheap labor with little value added. That’s the overarching message from a new white paper published this month by a consortium of regional and international think tanks, including the Geneva Network, IDEAS, Minimal Government Thinkers, Paramadina Public Policy Institute, SIU, and VEPR.
- One of the main challenges for countries including Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines will be reforming their intellectual property rights (IPRs) regimes, which continue to lag behind the rest of the world, as reflected in inconsistent application of patent protections.
- Better patent protections will be key to developing high-growth manufacturing and production areas like life sciences, semiconductors, electronics, and natural gas resources.
- Problems include long delays in granting patents across all these countries, with particularly prolonged processes in Thailand; this eats into the standard 20-year patent term, deterring inventors and companies from registering new inventions.
- Another problem area is unreasonable or inconsistent standards for granting new patents, which create uncertainty, again deterring potential applicants. Here Indonesia and the Philippines suffer some of the more arbitrary patent regimes.
- Compulsory licensing, in which national governments strip patent owners of their rights to allow local production (often on essentially fictitious grounds), is especially damaging to confidence in IPR regimes in key areas like pharmaceuticals. Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines have all either issued or flirted with issuing compulsory licenses.
- The report also contains suggestions for improving IPR governance in key areas such as copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and regulatory data protections.
