[Ip-health] IP-Watch puff piece on Michael Ryan

[James Love]

In this most recent ip-watch, Micheal Ryan is presented as an
academic expert on IP policy.   This article would have easily been
featured on the VOA web site, or maybe the IFPMA web site.    Next I
look forward to the ip-watch feature on Roger Bate's or the IPN work
on behalf of the poor, or on how John Kilama or Dick Widler are
representing civil society.  Would it be too much to ask to see some
actual investigative reporting of these front groups, and help
explain what how big pharma and other groups are funding these
projects to promote their own anti-poor agenda?

Micheal Ryan is basically a lobbyist for the industry, which has set
him up, with USAID funding also, at a US University.   His project is
funded by Abbott, Pfizer, IFPMA, PhRMA, J&J, GE (who has recently
hired Thaddus B.), and Wyeth, with support also from USAID, USPTO and
WIPO.  What type of advice is Ryan dishing out to poor countries?
Who really benefits from his advice?  What great scholarship has led
to his fancy academic appointment?

   Jamie


http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?
p=3D257&moderated=3Dtrue&res=3D1024_ff&print=3D0


31/3/2006

Interview with Michael Ryan, Director, Creative and Innovative
Economy Center

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posted by William New @ 9:44 am

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The Creative and Innovative Economy Center launched on 1 January at
George Washington University Law School in Washington, DC, will
conduct research and educational activities encouraging developing
countries to =93embrace creativity and innovation as tools to compete
more effectively in the world economy.=94 Ryan and his associates will
focus on more than a dozen topics in 2006, including biomedical
innovation in Brazil and Jordan, software in India, music in
Southeast Asia, health security in Africa, technology
commercialisation in Korea, publishing in Eastern Europe, and
intellectual property administration in the Middle East.

The university=92s law school is expanding its international focus and
has established a consortium with the Max Planck Institute and others
at the Munich Intellectual Property Law Centre, as well as a
partnership in India.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY WATCH (IPW): Can you tell us about the new
centre, why was it set up and what is its mission?

MICHAEL RYAN (MR): The Creative and Innovative Economy Center has
been established at George Washington University=92s law school because
=85 the dean and a number of the members of the faculty were really,
really excited because it fit in strategically with their own goals
about how they see George Washington and its role in the world, and
especially wanting to build relationships in developing countries.
Our centre is mostly oriented around developing country issues. There
will be some things we=92ll do that will not be directly related to it.

=93Growth economists teach us that if you want a high growth economy,
it only comes in one way, and that is by having innovation and
creativity in your economy. That=92s like the grounding for our centre.
Let=92s study creativity and innovation in developing countries.=94The
language =91creativity and innovation=92 is actually language we were
quite deliberate about. And that is that we=92re very interdisciplinary
intellectually [between business and law]. =85 Growth economists teach
us that if you want a high growth economy, it only comes in one way,
and that is by having innovation and creativity in your economy. You
also have to have stable macroeconomics. To give you an example, I
was speaking with the health minister of Botswana a couple of weeks
ago, and she said, =91our government [is] praised within Africa,
internally and externally, because we=92re one of the most stable
governments, but our growth is anaemic.=92 And I said, growth economics
can immediately answer that question: you=92re not integrating
technology, innovation and creativity into your economy. By contrast,
look at the more or less 10 percent growth that=92s been going on in
China for the last 20 years. They have been integrating technology
into their economy. That=92s like the grounding for our centre. Let=92s
study creativity and innovation in developing countries, let=92s try to
come to a much better understanding of what are the legal and policy
and the institutional, meaning social institutions, educational
institutions, and then what are the sort of market and business
issues that are associated with encouraging more creativity and
innovation in your economy.

IPW: I=92ve noticed a number of companies that have signed up to the
centre are from the United States. What is the opportunity for US
companies in this?

RYAN: We [also] have partnerships with nine African universities, and
I=92m working on a number of relationships that I can=92t disclose yet
because we haven=92t closed the deal, but are with European
organisations, and then we=92re also working with organisations in a
bunch of different developing countries. So I do want to clarify that
it looks a little bit more American right now than it=92s going to look
say if we all come back together again six months from now.

But your question is about why would an American company want to
support us. One reason is that in the long term, most of these
companies recognise that a big part of the growth in their business
is going to be in developing countries, and if those developing
countries have anaemic growth, then that means their market
opportunities are much fewer than they could or should be. Take for
example =85 people have finally discovered =85 that most of the economic
growth that has occurred in, I think it=92s the last five or 10 years,
has come from Brazil, Russia, India and China. And since we know that
it=92s the innovation and creativity thing that=92s critical, this is
probably the biggest reason of all.

IPW: So how does what the centre does relate to those opportunities?
Are you guiding these governments toward economies that use
technology and IP?

RYAN: Yes, but I wouldn=92t put it exactly that way. That would imply
that we=92re going to be advising as a matter of McKinsey-like
strategic analysis, advising companies on where they should be going.
That clearly is not going to be the case. Instead, how I would put it
is, our strategy is to try to identify some key countries in every
region of the world and try to focus our initiative there, and to do
a combination of studying what=92s happening and providing more
education about it. To give you an example: though the centre just
started officially on January first, I=92ve actually been working in
Jordan for six years now. Usually that=92s because of USAID, but it=92s
not always. The Royal Scientific Society of Jordan several times
invited me, and the King Abdullah Intellectual Property Center
sometimes invited me. So I=92ve been =85 helping with the reform process,
the WTO accession, free trade agreement, founding =91intellectual
property week.=92

I have been doing this for a long time, and I have a sense for if you
can choose certain countries and try to work with them what will
happen is I think they will become models. So we=92ll learn because
we=92re being generalisable, we=92re studying in every region of the world.

IPW: Can you describe how you work with a government? Is it an
advocacy role?

RYAN: That=92s not exactly what I think our role is going to be.
Basically we=92re students and teachers. It sounds like puffery to say,
=91Mike Ryan=92s going to go around advising governments,=92 I don=92t know=
,
maybe somebody will ask me for my advice. Instead I would say this,
the Nigerian representative said to me the other day, =91Thank you for
your report, this is really helpful because this report explains what
the role of policy in institutions is in promoting innovation, then
shows us data to show that it has had a measurable impact in a very
important country like Brazil, which is one we look to for
leadership.=92 Now if that happens consistently, then we=92re doing our
job. We=92re going to release these reports and if we make them useful,
if we make them targeted on their concerns, then they will learn from
them and decide maybe that there=92s things they should model.

=93What I look for in some country, I look for somebody to be the
champion. When that happens, then the locals are the people who are
really wanting to engage.=94The study of Brazil is very interesting
because Brazil has perhaps the most extraordinary amount of
biodiversity in the world. A good deal of the last 100 years of
biomedical innovation have been by taking, by screening compounds,
out of flora and fauna, and despite that, the world=92s greatest source
of biodiversity has not been used very much, and that=92s Brazil.
What=92s very interesting to us is that after some policy and legal
changes, now several of their local companies are involved in finally
trying to develop their own biodiversity as well as their own
traditional knowledge. If we think about the critical case that we
found, which is that a product that has actually been released on the
market by a company =85 [that] started with traditional knowledge,
which is what told them there was something to go look for, they
isolated the compound which was from a plant, and then they carried
out clinical trials in partnership with a university hospital, to
prove that it was effective and safe, and then they put it together
as a new product. Oh, but let=92s also point out that they got filed
for international patent protection, in the US, in Europe, and to the
PCT [WIPO Patent Cooperation Treaty] to make sure they=92d have
protection in a lot of countries around the world, because they said,
this product will be a terrific product that can reach a very big
marketplace because it works on issues like sore joints. They=92re not
only looking at their biodiversity as a source of innovation, they=92re
looking at a global strategy which could end up leading to them
helping in encouraging Brazilian exports. And furthermore, this means
the Brazilian strategy could become the model for other developing
countries.

There=92s a lot of countries that have a lot of biodiversity, whether
you=92re talking about southeast Asia, the Caribbean, Central America
or sub-Saharan Africa, =85 they have a good amount of biodiversity,
they have universities, and they have a good deal of talent. [In]
many countries around the world =85 the academic community have been in
many cases educated in the United States and Europe. These are highly
sophisticated people who have the intellectual tools to do some very
important things for their countries, but the problem is that they
can=92t themselves develop a new product. In Brazil it only happened
when the companies were able to partner with the universities, and
that only happened after the patent laws were strengthened and
applied to biomedical products, and then that only happened when they
had [a government] organisation which would actually provide funding
for the partnership. Ultimately, in order to solve the problems of
the negotiation of the contract between the two sides, they passed a
law to clarify all those relationships, =85 [which] will encourage more
of these kinds of partnerships.

This is easily replicatable in other countries around the world, and
think of the potential impact. If it is the case that 10 percent of
the world research budget is devoted to 90 percent of the world=92s
population, meaning that the poor people around the world who have
special disease problems - malaria, tuberculosis - wouldn=92t it be
wonderful if it were the case if you had people in developing
countries who know exactly what the local health problems are, if the
system was designed to encourage them to innovate new products, just
as the Brazilians have done in example one and are in the process of
doing with other research projects that they have going on.

What our study in Brazil is showing is that the solutions [for
developing countries to build knowledge and human capital] have to do
with how you build the right kinds of institutions to leverage the
knowledge you have =85 [and] support public-private partnerships.

IPW: So in some ways, the centre could be considered a conduit for
bringing these things about. How would [experts in developing and
developed countries] come together as a result of your work?

RYAN: I will say how. We=92re not a consulting firm. We have an active
programme of educational programmes, and one of the kinds of things
we do are roundtables. So for example we called this [February
meeting in Geneva] a roundtable to release this [Brazil] report. The
idea is with a roundtable you try to bring together somewhere between
20 and 50 opinion leaders, where you can have =85 an informed
discussion and dialogue. We have planned roundtables in various
countries around the world. Before the centre officially existed last
fall, I hosted a roundtable in Nigeria with ministers from around sub-
Saharan Africa, carefully targeted, there were only like a dozen of
us in the room. We came to together to talk about creativity and
innovation issues, we talked about various models around the world,
we talked about Jordan a good deal by the way. Then we all left
saying, how could we carry this forward with additional research in
our countries and ultimately create programmes, we meaning the
governments.

[I]n more or less May =85 is a roundtable in which the minister I was
talking to said, =91I=92m going to bring together critical people within
the government, several people from the private sector, several
people from universities.=92 [T]here are going to be about 15 to 20 of
us, and we=92re going to report the Brazil study, and secondarily we=92re
going to talk about the Jordan story.

What I look for in some country, I look for somebody to be the
champion. That somebody probably has to be a government person, it
could be somebody outside the government, but anyway you need a
champion who says, I=92m going to bring everybody together and we=92re
going to focus on this question. When that happens, then the locals
are the people who are really wanting to engage with that question.
It has to be at their own initiative.

=93Most of the funding is probably going to come from public monies.
Personally most of what I=92ve done in the world up the point where the
centre was created has been through public monies.=94It=92s also the case
that we=92ll be carrying on educational programmes. We=92ll probably
mostly call them seminars. It is the case like with the event here in
Geneva [during the February WIPO development agenda meeting] where
the Nigerians were showing a =91Nollywood=92 film, it is the case that
there is an economics of the so-called cultural industries, film,
music, video games and art. We might have people from the ministry of
culture and from the arts community and say from the private sector,
who are their local book publishers or their local film directors,
we=92ll maybe bring two dozen of them together and put them into a two-
day educational programme oriented around teaching the economics of
it, successful business strategies, and then talking about the policy
and legal and institutional environment you need. For example, how
you need to have one of your local universities develop a film
programme, film studies, maybe writing, perhaps cinematography, it
will depend on the country environment.

IPW: What about policies governments need to take or not take, such
as create some incentives or maybe remove some barriers? Would you be
knowledgeable about the specific policies in each country, or how
would those be addressed?

RYAN: What we will probably tend to do overall is to talk more in
general and let the local governments make the decisions about how to
do things. Most countries around the world had TRIPS-compliant
copyright laws before TRIPS was passed, because it wasn=92t really that
controversial to many of them. One of the things we=92ll be teaching
is, you have to have the copyright laws, you have to have the patent
laws, you have to be enforcing them, we=92ll be able to teach these
kinds of principles, but the details about how they=92re going to court
enforcement, or how they=92re going judicial settlement, frankly I
don=92t want to get into the details of that. That=92s something that the
locals should decide amongst themselves. I can only teach about
principles and let them decide how they want to do the details.

IPW: You have a lot of sponsors. How much does it cost to become a
member? Is it varied depending on whether they are private sector or
a public institution?

RYAN: Basically how it works is that most of the funding is probably
going to come from public monies. Personally most of what I=92ve done
in the world up the point where the centre was created has been
through public monies, because it was USAID calling me in various
places around the world, it was the US embassies in various places
around the world, it was WIPO, I=92ve been many times a WIPO lecturer,
consultant, doing studies. The study [on Jordan] that comes out in a
couple of months by the way is joint WIPO study. When we gather a
year from now, it=92ll be the case that we=92ll have an annual report
which Frank [Pietrucha at Definitive Communications in Washington,
who has been working with Ryan for eight years] will do, it=92s due
next January, it=92ll list these kinds of things about how much money
we spent, and I=92m pretty sure it=92s going to be mostly public sector
support because they are the ones that have the large budgets.

It is the case that private sector companies are providing some
support which is =85 tertiary to the kind of major funding. What the
private sector support provides actually is ultimately some bridging
money. It helps me be able to go after big contracts to be doing
educational programmes. They=92re soft dollars [from the private
sector]. It costs me money to have a staff.

IPW: I saw on the website quite a list of researchers. For a month or
two old organisation, you=92ve corralled a pretty good team.

=93I believe it=92s the case that five years from now, =85 we will be able
to show that in certain countries, laws were changed, policies were
changed, activities happened that resulted in growth. It=92s taken me
10 years to get to this point.=94RYAN: In our brochure I list these 10
principles from which we=92re operating. I=92ve known this for more or
less 10 years. I=92ve been trying to pull this all together as a
centre, rather than the random, =91Mike is invited by USAID here, Mike
is invited by WIPO to go there.=92 I=92ve also believed that I had a
coherent sense for this in a way that I don=92t think many of the
organisations I actually work with do. I believe it=92s the case that
five years from now, we=92ll have a lot to talk about, as a matter of
shall we say, measurable outcomes. We will be able to show that in
certain countries, laws were changed, policies were changed,
activities happened that resulted in growth. It=92s taken me 10 years
to get to this point. We will have studies coming out regarding
music, regarding film, regarding information technology, and a
handful of other things, information and publishing, software, and
they=92re in specific developing countries around the world, I wasn=92t
blowing smoke. We are going to have all that. They=92re going to be
coming out over the coming year.

What I usually try to put together is a team of someone who is more
or less a law professor or someone who is highly skilled in law, with
someone who is more of a business management professor. With the idea
usually being that we need to bring together two skill sets. In some
ways, I have both, which is why the previous work has been mostly by
me. Like this Brazil study has been done by me, that=92s because I know
pretty much the law, and I also know the business management issues.
I know the institutional as well as the market issues. So we=92ll bring
together these teams and be able to do these studies and hopefully
have impact with that.

IPW: In Washington, every think tank, I don=92t know about academic
institutions, is known to have an orientation on one side or another
on issues. Does the centre have a known orientation on issues?

=93I=92m very pro-multinational company, because I have to be to be pro-
local company and to be pro-local economic growth. The country that
walls itself from multinational activity is going to have a big
problem with local knowledge and learning.=94RYAN: If there=92s
something, it=92s that people know I=92m totally pro-creativity and
innovation oriented, and I want to make it happen. Local governments
know that, the US government knows that, and WIPO knows that, and
they know that I work really, really hard on trying to put together
all the kinds of understanding, shall we say, the laws, institutions,
policies, courts, business sectors, etcetera. So I think that=92s what
our public image is going to be, our public image is probably going
to be a reflection of what my public image has been.

It=92s a fair characterisation to say that I am very pro-business. I=92m
very pro-business in developing countries, and I=92m very pro-
multinational companies. You can=92t ultimately be pro-business in
local economies if you=92re not pro-multinational companies.[Business
school faculty] have learned that the most important flows of
knowledge in the world come through multinational companies. And what
business school people have learned is the best way to integrate new
knowledge into your country is through multinational activity, it=92s
through their trade activities, their marketing activities, their
investment activities. Which is why it=92s the case that I=92m very pro-
multinational company, because I have to be to be pro-local company
and to be pro-local economic growth. The country that walls itself
from multinational activity is going to have a big problem with local
knowledge and learning.

IPW: On the list of sponsors for the centre, how do I better
understand how companies and others got on it, who gave more or less
and who is responsible for which activity that the centre carries out?

RYAN: With the companies, they don=92t sign on for us to [do] a
particular thing. They write a check to us, and with that check then
we carry out our whole range of activities. What I basically say to
them is, =91Here=92s our agenda, and if you=92d like to be a part of that
agenda, then help us.=92 It=92s sort of like being a Baptist minister. We
carry on all these missionary works, so the Baptist minister says,
=91Please reach into your pocket and give us support.=92 We are going to
have some USAID funding that we=92ll be able to announce in the not-too-
distant future, and those of course will be country-oriented because
that=92s how USAID operates. So when you see us doing a whole bunch of
stuff in country X, Y or Z, we=92ll all be able to say, it=92ll all be
public knowledge that that=92s being funded by USAID or one of the
other US government things.

=93What I basically say to them is, =91Here=92s our agenda, and if you=92d
like to be a part of that agenda, then help us.=92 It=92s sort of like
being a Baptist minister. We carry on all these missionary works, so
the Baptist minister says, =91Please reach into your pocket and give us
support.=92=94The second part is, yes, we=92re obviously young, we don=92t
have a $50 million dollar budget or anything, we=92re not an enormous
outfit. I don=92t know how big Jeffrey Sachs=92 operation is at Columbia
University, but I=92m pretty sure it=92s bigger than my operation. But I
will say this, we already have the funding for what we=92re doing.
We=92re doing eight research projects this year, I think it is, we=92re
doing at least two more roundtables in Geneva during this calendar
year, and we=92re doing at least two roundtables in developing
countries this calendar year, and we=92re doing at least several
seminar-like things in our Munich centre. So that=92s a very ambitious
agenda for the first calendar year, for the first 12 months. It is
the case when you=92re in my role you=92re constantly figuring out where
you can do more and how you can fund to do more, but we are basically
busy this year. The number of people you see there, those are
projects. Those aren=92t people who are going to maybe do something
someday for us.

IPW: The people on the staff are not sitting in the centre, but are
doing work outside too?

RYAN: Right. Take for example Professor Nolan at Georgetown. He
specialises in looking at software in developing countries,
especially India and Czech Republic, and so we=92re funding him to do
another project on India and software. So that=92s what we=92re doing.
They=92re not all people on our staff, it=92s not like we=92re one building
with 50 people in it. Instead, what we=92re doing is providing targeted
financial support to people and then maybe putting together a
partnership of two people who might not have known each other before
but now will work together.

IPW: Thank you.


Michael Ryan is the Director of the Creative and Innovative Economy
Center launched on 1 January at George Washington University Law
School in Washington, DC. He has served on the faculties of the
University of Michigan School of Business and the Georgetown
University School of Foreign Service and School of Business. He is
author of Knowledge Diplomacy: Global Competition and the Politics of
Intellectual Property (1998). He received his Ph.D. from the
University of Michigan, where his =93cognate=94 area was law.

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William New, the author of this post, may be reached at wnew@ip-
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---------------------------------
James Love, CPTech / www.cptech.org / mailto:james.love@cptech.org /
tel. +1.202.332.2670 / mobile +1.202.361.3040

"If everyone thinks the same: No one thinks."  Bill Walton