2004-07-13 Global Competitiveness Report: EU offers same level of "IP protection" as US

--> [ deutsch ] [ News | Studies | WEForum ]

The Global Competitiveness Report, a annual report published by the World Economic Forum, is produced in collaboration with leading academics worldwide. This year'e report contains "exclusive data from the Executive Opinion Survey (7,741 responses in 2003-2004)", which can be seen as the opinion of the world's leading business executives.

What is the opinion of these business executives on matters of copyright, patents, trademarks etc?

Table 6.04, part 3, section 6, p. 473 (excerpt available) summarises their responses on this issue, and rates Germany, UK and Finland as 6.2 on a scale ranging from 1 (least stringent) to 7 (most stringent), whereas the USA and Denmark are rated 6.2.

Apparently, the current US legislation does not offer a significant advantage for the world's leading business executives. The table linked to above does not show the results for Denmark (6.2), Finland (6.1), Sweden (6.0), The Netherlands (5.9), etc. The complete table with results for all 102 countries is probably only available in the printed edition of the Global Competitiveness Report.

Comments

Hartmut Pilch: It would be interesting to see how they represent "strength of IP protection" on a linear scale. How do they deal with the experience that sometimes "more is less"? If FFII was to rate "IP protection", we would probably give minus scores for software patentability, because software patents undermine the legal positions of copyright owners.