Mindwealth: Building Personal Wealth from Intellectual Property Rights

By William A. Jones

Intellectual property rights (IPR) are a force for good. People could harness their power more.
The book describes the UK and global environment in which people can build personal wealth from IP. At its core is the statistic that approximately 70 per cent of a firms value is in its IP, which is generated by people. Changing the environment would help more people build personal wealth from IPR. That includes a better industrialization environment that delivers national competitive advantage through IPR.
Author William Jones describes the ecosystem within which people generate and exploit IPR, using many examples, snapshots, and observations, as well as structured disciplines. The book takes a look at this ecosystem through the lens of the individual and IPR and more specifically, the underpinning idea is that people can build their wealth by ensuring that IP works for them. It highlights factors that can influence an individuals ability to be successful. It suggests new ideas to provide a better platform for building personal wealth.
The book doesnt fall neatly into any genre of, for example, investment, economics, law, or politics. Rather, it integrates or synthesizes a different position and new genre which exists above or to one side of these.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jul 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504941211

William A. Jones

William Jones Bill has led and developed European and global converging communications, Internet, media, mobile, technology, and IT businesses for over thirty years with Fortune and Times 100 companies, often their largest international businesses. He has also led SME market leaders and been instrumental in forming many new international and global entities to success and/or IPO/trade sale. He has led businesses in over twenty countries, been a resident in four, and traded with over sixty-five, and is a former board director of businesses in more than twenty. His experience has ranged from critical turnaround and restructuring to business formation and rapid growth, to transformations, cross-border, multi-site, and international jurisdictions’ commerce, including leading and developing economies. He has also undertaken work in investment, M & A, venture capital, and private equity globally. His customer base has ranged from B2B and large global multinational accounts to consumer markets and retail. He has formed, developed, built and led many businesses in the TMT/Internet/mobile convergence industries across a number of countries, often in parallel. Some he cofounded. Additionally, he has significant exposure to a range of other industries. He’s been a thought leader on convergence and next-generation policy in the UK and the EU, led major strategy projects for blue-chip companies, and been a member of the leadership teams of Fortune 100 and FTSE 100 businesses. He has chaired or spoken at leading global conferences from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing, and Shanghai – the most recent being the global summit on smart devices and mobility. Other topics have included copyright and technology, mobile user experience, digital-rights strategies, convergence, intellectual property rights, digital media, mobile security, homeland defence, privacy, broadband, SME policy, media and entertainment, content management, user-generated content, social media, Chinese IT industry, technology innovation in financial services, social banking/investment, Internet/IP TV, and “Big Data.” He participated in a UK government mission to Korea and Japan on TMT and was a major contributor to the report. He has been a contributory author to a mobile-Internet-industry leadership book (Mobile Web 2.0), has written for Money Management, and was a contributor to US Jupitermedia’s Digital Rights Management Watch (now Copyright and Technology). He is a recognised insider on intellectual property and rights management globally, having stimulated UK government reviews and engaged with WIPO. He has a number of notable initiatives to his credit. He has led the development and introduction of a range of products. His policy work in the UK and the EU has provided exposure to directives, programs, and developments. He recently supported World Economic Forum (Davos) initiatives on the impact of technology innovation on future financial services (published) and media and entertainment global industries (published). His engagement with the UK government probably led to the formation of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, to which he also contributed. Originally a graduate in metallurgy from Sheffield University, he also has an MBA (finance) from Cranfield University, is a Chartered Management Accountant, a Chartered Global Management Accountant, and a Chartered Engineer. He is FCA Retail Distribution Review (RDR) compliant, has a CFA investment management certificate, is a CFA Level II candidate, and has a CFA Statement of Professional Standing. He is an Approved Person under the UK’s FCA financial-services regulatory regime and a certified trustee under the pensions regulator’s regime. He is a PRINCE2 project-management practitioner. He is trained in governance and compliance. He is a former member of the UK government’s Broadband Stakeholder Group Executive, freeman of the City of London, liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, former director and member of the executive committee of BritishAmerican Business Inc. New York and London, former director and CEO of European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA), former advisory director of London First, and fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (Ret’d). He is a member of the CFA Institute and CFA Society of UK, Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, the Pensions Management Institute, the Institute of Metals and Mining, and a subject-matter expert with EU’s Horizon 2020 R & D program on Internet, innovation, SMEs, and enterprise competitiveness. He was recently a BAFTA award judge. Bill is a partner of a venture capital firm which provides international unquoted TMT investments for sophisticated and high-net-worth individuals, and supports e-synergy on cleantech/alternative energy investments. He is an angel investor in a number of disruptive global TMT companies. Global Village is a SME. It is a consulting practice with outsourcing accords and NDAs with three leading IT companies each in China and India, as well as the Philippines, Indonesia, Romania, and the US. The company won the prestigious EU Award for Online Excellence under the EU eContent program. www.globalvillage.ltd.uk

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© 2015 William A. Jones. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/05/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4120-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4119-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4121-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015906336

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1:    Ideas: A Force for Good

The UK IPR landscape

UK success stories

Retail

Fashion

Drinks

Food

Pharmaceuticals

Utilities

Media

Entertainment, music, and film

Financial services

International IPR-based industries which are household names

Collective or Solo Endeavour

2:    The UK in an International Context

Impact of US Congress

Other international IP-related organisations

The World Trade Organisation (WTO)

The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)

Horizon 2020

The European Patent Office

The European Unified Patent Court

A global context

3:    People and Communities

The benefits of IP

The individual benefits

From individuals to communities

Academics now benefit

Whose IPR?

Institutions relocate and redistribute

Training conditions corporate behaviour

A product of minds becomes an instrument of tax efficiency

Communities vary in IP

International rankings

UK appears weaker in patent applications

Former communist societies

Role of academic qualifications in relation to IP

Should the UK concern itself with international rankings?

Government crowding out private initiatives

Freedom to think

Industry by industry

IP helps people thrive

Internet changes the dynamic

IP benefits communities

Looking at IP at the centre of wealth creation

An IPR-protected economy

Rethinking government intervention

Communities without competitive IP

Proud good people

Disruptive IPRs

Root causes of deprivation

Participating in the benefits of IP

Meaningful jobs from IP

The UK’s narrow base

Different solutions for different countries

Externally sourced IPR

People movements, migrations, and IP

Skills, brands, and certifications

Labour closed shops and IPR

IPR certifications carry value

National occupations and branded skills

Subject-specific skills at the top of international companies

CEO tenure and its impact on IPR creation and exploitation

Wasted people

Think total IP

Grow people

Learning from US training

Language conditions IP aspirations in business

IP impacts on people movements

Factors leading to migrations

Imposed cultural changes

Academic concerns

Volume and effectiveness

Creating an effective culture

US academic culture

History of nations in IP

Impact of IP famine

IP migration

IP can condition people on how they view themselves

Impact of people’s interaction with IPR on health

4:    Wealth and Pensions

70 per cent of the value is in IPR

IP: a platform for wealth

Creating the national wealth

Where business derives value and wealth

IPR confers monopoly pricing and wealth

IP is used to create business value in different ways

Adam Smith and modern economics

Communication and categorisations

Going about daily lives using economists’ language

A unifying theory of personal wealth and IPR

How IPR secures revenues in markets

Marketing communications

Media

Channels

Reconsidering economics with additional factors

Creative industries in national wealth

A nation as an aggregation of business

IP deficit may lead to industrial decline

Automotive

ICT

Computer development and manufacture

Software packages

Communications equipment manufacturers

A case study for building wealth and pensions: GSM

Aircraft manufacture

Pharmaceutical and biotech industry

Sharing the IP wealth

The 80:20 rule of sharing IP wealth

5:    Living the American Dream

Living the American dream – in a different land

6:    Grouping IPR Together

Types of IPR

Copyright

Patents

Trademarks

Design rights

Other types of IPR

Media as a component of IP

The multiplier or additive law of IPR

7:    Creating and Exploiting IPR

The process of generating and converting IPR

The process of creating and exploiting IPR

The need for discipline and rigour

IPR does not happen by accident

The rewards of IPR

Facilitating state and social programs

Trading and wealth from IP

Value creation

Role of economics in valuing IP

Exploiting IP intelligently

Learning from US experience in exploiting IP

IP within the UK economy

Monetising IP

Facilitating successful IPR creation and exploitation

Service economy and IP

The national consciousness and IP

National champions and IP

Breaking the national value chains

IP people’s dialogue with politicians

Lobbying and IPR

PPE and IPR

Multinationals and IP

Political rhetoric and IP

The nature of society and IP

Using IP to create wealth

People’s minds create IP

Does the structure of society influence IP creation?

Certifications and qualifications enable strong IPR franchises

The framework of good law enables IPR exploitation

IP insiders and outsiders

Institutionalised IP

Political attribution

Rewarding IP creators

Exploitation of IPR

Government role in exploitation

Lower cost or higher quality

Socialism and IPR

Do people’s minds want to create an exploit IPR?

People’s minds react to IPR

Measuring IPR value

Focusing on value and wealth creation

Implications of longevity

Political and governmental focus

Corporate’s role in delivering IP tax to governments

IPR delivers dividends to pension funds

Focus on creating and exploiting IPR

Parallel activity and involvement

Emulating others

The impact of infrastructure

Dominance of IP in the mix

Citizen IPR

8:    Competitive IPR Advantages of Nations

Competitive advantages in developing IP

Competitive advantages in creating and exploiting IPR

Did it skew economics?

IPR is more visible in policy

The wealth of a nation could be mainly IP

Marketing and branding as a driver of IPR

Fractured national value chains

UK’s IPR is skewed

Impact of IPR on an economy

The market and IPR

Impact on STEM

Focus and clusters

Ecosystem relationships help IPR

Differing national IPR processes

National advantage in creating and exploiting IPR

From linear to parallel processes

A government exhibiting disruptive behaviour

The cult of the CEO

National differences lead to national advantages

Imported IPR distorts

People vote for IP with their feet

People emigrate to be where the IPR is

Educating for another nation’s IPR advantage

Impact of IPR obsolescence on people

Fractured national value chain and IPR

Film IPR national advantage

EU IP in the competitive advantage of nations

Whither UK and its IPR and personal wealth?

Education in the competitive advantage of nations in IPR

The role of the EU in the competitive advantages of nations

EU’s Horizon 2020 feeds new industries

Possible consequences for the UK

Impact of Horizon 2020 funding on the UK

Environment conditions achievement

The type of economy is important

UK’s riskless wealth creators owned by other countries

National interdependency

Role of WIPO and IPR

Differing governmental and NGO objectives

9:    Nations, Borders, and Boundaries

The IPR interrelationship

iprastack

IPR influences national occupations

Is this cause or effect?

IPR profiles influences national occupations

The nature of the economy is also an influence

Leveraging IPR to international markets

Transposing one country’s ideas to another creates challenges

IPR transfers wealth between countries

People movements

10:    The UK’s Fractured National Value Chain

Vertically- and horizontally-integrated businesses and IPR

The background

Policy initiatives

The shape of government intervention

Insiders and outsiders

Government’s intervention and debate

The US experience

UK learning from the US

An SME famine in a fractured value chain

An unintegrated economy

A fragile base

UK’s TMT profile

Attitudes

Application, energy, and can-do attitude

Where is the skill base?

11:    Rebuilding the Value Chain

Comparing the UK to the US

The US template

Using the process

The virtual product factory

Relearning the industrialisation process

Which disciplines to lead?

Product development as a key skill: creating and exploiting IPR

Making UK people part of the US product factory

Repairing the value chain

The art of the new industrialisation process

12:    Where Is the IPR?

The IPR in what we import and export

The IPR in what we export

National IP in the brand rather than the product

Distribution channels

Utilities

Banks

Service

Imported IPR is in the product and brand

Cop-outs and abdications of responsibilities

Let the market decide

Instruments, policies or processes?

13:    Language, Culture, and IPR

Facts and truths

Language

Buzzwords and jargon

Language conditions productivity

Socialist language leads to limited IPR

Language conditions ability to develop IPR

Use the language of IP and not the language of economics

The language could be wrong

Nations using a common language differently

Language and Lexicon

14:    Politics and IPR

Politicians’ vision of society impacts IPR

A centralist approach

The value of IPR

How politicians deal with IPR

Politics and politicians as creators and users of IPR

Politics in exploiting IPR

Government as an instrument of politics in IPR

IPR and political parties

Politicians and civil servants

Scientists and engineers versus politicians

Corporate input into IPR policies

Reevaluating IPR policy through the lens of the individual

A different political model

Wasted efforts and lost opportunities

Significant differences

Excellent UK track record, but insufficient today

UK universities fettered

What is the role of politics in IPR?

What is the impact of politics on IPR?

Myths regarding IPR-related industries

Cycles of IPR activity

UK’s IP people are largely invisible to domestic politicians

15:    Government – National, International, and EU

Government, politics, and IPR

Government as a business

Closed and open systems

Government intervention

Intervention in the right place?

IP not a technical issue

Is it the right intervention?

To be seen to be doing something

Speed of government change impacts IPR

Government initiatives skew the IPR landscape

Government policies

Government distorts the IP landscape

Government policy can damage IP

Government stimulates aspects of IP

Government intervention creates fractured value chains

Rights skills not present?

Insufficient technology graduates

IP and the major departments of state

Transport

Health

Defence

Security

Treasury and tax

Work and pensions

Culture

Higher education

Environment

Home office

Industry (now BIS)

Community

State agencies

Regulators and IPR

National IP in an EU context

EU Is Mainly SMEs

What do we want and how do we get there?

Is Europe the IP answer?

Better, more of the same, or something different?

Where is the debate about the EU positioned?

To which ecosystem should the UK belong?

Re-anchor the debate

The EU Horizon 2020 programs

The choice for the UK

Funding UK Creative R & D

What benefits does the EU bring the UK?

The role of high-level advisory groups

The comparative shape of the UK

A European IPR initiative: GSM

Government, citizens, consumers, and IPR

Origin of the consumer versus citizen bias

16:    Laws and Regulations

Financial regulation and ICT regulation are similar

US IPR leverages distribution channels

Role of property rights in IP

17:    Education (Learning and Teaching)

Do people want to create and exploit IP?

At home

At school

On TV

In cinema

In the high street

In magazines

Pubs and clubs

Financing the learning

Avoiding the difficult

Influencing young minds

Invisible activity

Human angle on short attention span

Breeding character

Instant gratification

An IP bias

Educating for a service or product economy

A tradition of property rights helps

IP and coaching and mentoring

Knowledge economy

Impact on imports, exports, and national wealth

Inward investment’s impact on skills and knowledge

The way we do things

Sharing knowledge within the EU

Government intervention skews knowledge and wealth

IP and the hierarchy of academic disciplines

Occupations and IP

Moving between disciplines

IP as a discipline and in academia

University of IPR

New disciplines

18:    Economics

Economics favours the institution

UK ecosystem penetrated by foreign firms

Economics and IP

Governments working internationally

Economics as a social science

Looking at economics from an IP perspective

Economics in the context of the 70 per cent

iprology and iprics

Money and IP

Capital and IP

Labour and IP

IPR people’s view

Developing economy-specific policies for IP

Does IPR sit outside economic thinking?

ipronomics

A unifying theory of personal wealth and IPR

IPR moves in a different way from economics

How IP impacts economics

IP and employment

UK economy impacted by external IP

Politicians’ initiatives may decouple employment from IP

Time difference between creating and experiencing IPR

IP and importing-nation economics

IP: a separate discipline from PPE

Citizens and IP

A parallel process

Modern economics was invented after IPR of copyright, patents

Bridging the language

Central banks and economics in IP

The knowledge-based economy and IP

Employment behaviour, economics, and IP

Outsourcing and IP

Free trade of labour, goods, services, and IP

IP and investment

Emerging technologies and industries

Industrial Strategy

19:    Governance, Leadership, and Organisation

IP and governance

The CEO and board and IP

IP throughout the organisation

National and natural skills at the top

20:    Drawing It Together

References

About the Author

To Sue and Mark

Preface

This book is written from a UK perspective, but a significant portion of its content can apply to people in other countries globally.

In the book I connect dots in perhaps unconventional ways and take some strides across the landscape to develop a narrative of how people can benefit from their intellectual property (IP – the creation of the mind) and their rights (IPR – the rights attached to IP). To do so I must look at the relationship between IP and people, on the one hand, and economics, politics, government, and the law on the other.

I’m not a university-qualified lawyer, economist, or politician, although I have undertaken modules of study in these ever-changing topics. Therefore this book may not conform to what some professionals – in particular politicians, lawyers, economists, health professionals, and business leaders – would tell you. That is because I try to approach the world of people and IP from the perspective of the individual and the benefits that individuals can gain from IP, rather than the world of IPR and the institution. By institution, I mean the legal forms and persistent structures of firms, charities, governments, political parties, and the like. I believe that the world of IP and the institution has moved away from the original intention of IPR, and this has conditioned the above professions and the laws and models they influence.

This is not a manual or textbook on IP. However, I do start with a brief overview to give any reader not familiar with IP some background. Don’t look for too many closely argued and extensively detailed propositions. This is not a book of theory; others can gather the data for that analysis. Rather, I paint a real and conceptual picture that I hope will help people and communities.

You’ll find that some points are repeated. There are reasons for this:

• The same points are made in different contexts and therefore have different nuances and interpretations.

• The book was developed over some time as I repositioned by requalifying in a different space and developed other perspectives.

• I’m still developing the conceptual model for this work. We know that existing models are inadequate, as was demonstrated in the financial crisis.

But I do develop some themes and ideas. I make assertions, oversimplifications, leaps of logic (underpinned, I believe, by a greater understanding than that shown), and theses, based on my observations over time. These may contribute something to a view; however, I accept that writers whose academic work is infinitely superior to mine and who have better data could destroy – or support – my theses quite quickly.

My goal is simply to join the dots of IP and the individual in a way I’ve not seen done before – to look at the world of personal wealth through the lens of IP. With my humble offering, I hope to take forward how people can benefit from IP.

Alternative Titles

These are some other ideas I had for the title of this book and discarded. I show them here only because they provide perspective on the content of this book.

• The Wealth of Individuals

• Your Ideas Can Change Your Life

• People’s Wealth from IPR

• From Brain Power to Know-How to Pensions

• From Knowledge to IP to Personal Wealth

• Converting UK’s Intellectual Property to Personal, Family, and Community Wealth

• The Impact of an Idea

• Looking at the UK’s Economy through the Personal and IPR Lens

• Idea2Idea

• Citizen IPR

• Behavioural IPR

• Creating National Value from Intellectual Property

• The Competitive Advantages of IPR

• The Competitive IP Advantages of Nations

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank the team at AuthorHouse for helping me bring this book into existence. Specifically, Michelle Jane my publishing consultant, Terri M. my editor, Pete Smith the editorial services associate, and Valerie Raines, but I recognise that working along with them is a team of professionals covering each stage of the process whom I don’t know.

I’d also like to thank the countless unseen heroes – the IPR creators, writers, artists, composers, scientists, engineers, designers, database people, musicians, filmmakers, agricultural geneticists, medical advancers, and trademark and brand people – who have made my life what it is today.

I’m very well aware of the debt I owe to the forward-looking people who created their IPR up to seventy or more years ago. I have met many, and it’s been a joy. This world belongs to them and to all IPR creators and exploiters. They belong to families and communities who depend on them and enjoy their work.

Introduction

I wrote this book to help British people understand how their environment influences their ability to create and use intellectual property rights (IPR) to ensure their wealth and well-being. Individuals would be better able to build personal wealth from IPR were their environment to change. That includes a better industrialisation environment in the UK that puts people at the heart of delivering personal wealth and national competitive advantage through intellectual property (IP). A significant proportion of the comments can apply to people in other countries around the world.

I look at this world from a UK perspective. I describe an ecosystem within which people can generate and exploit IPR, drawing on my own personal experience and observations as well as those of some structured disciplines. I look at it from different perspectives as well. My work highlights many factors that can create the conditions and tilt the ability of individuals to achieve successful outcomes.

Have you thought about why lives, families, and communities turn out as they do? Have you thought about how people build personal wealth and thrive? Have you thought about the differences between what is portrayed in the media and real life? Have you thought about the causes of deprivation, health, law-and-order, and community issues, and how you might change that dynamic?

Most people attribute such issues to things like luck, skill, personal behaviour, stress, money, location, and changed jobs. Isn’t it easy to ring-fence a problem onto the individual? In fact, there could be a different outcome, as a look at the world illustrates. And therefore, it is possible help people find a different path to prosperity and well-being.

That solution is facilitating the building of personal wealth through the creation and commercialising (I use the easier word exploiting throughout the book) of IPR at a personal level. We need to create the conditions for people to build personal wealth through IP, either creating and exploiting IP alone or with others. We must create an ecosystem within which IP exists and help people and their representatives navigate a way forward. In that sense, my work is political, but it’s far wider than that. It describes and provides examples and a framework for an overall view. It proposes new ideas for making more people be more effective in creating and exploiting IPR.

There were a number of triggers for this book, including:

• US studies showing that 70 to 90 per cent (PricewaterhouseCoopers) of a firm’s value is IPR

• a senior economist saying to me that economists don’t understand IPR – which I doubt, but I became frustrated in my literature search

• a recognition that IP has become increasingly important over the last fifteen years (my own initial input into public policy was more than ten years ago)

• my experience with international businesses in IPR-driven industries

• observation of people’s lives in various countries

• international public-policy engagement during my business career

• wide reading (but never wide enough or nearly enough)

• the recognition that there’s an idea and a story in every community.

But this is not a method or how-to book; the issues are too complex for that. Instead, I propose that some existing factors be changed. I suggest a fresh look at some areas to provide a better platform for building personal wealth.

To do that, I start with some basics. Those who know the broad details of IP may be able to skip that section, although it does provide examples which many people don’t see because they tend to operate in one industrial silo. This book describes a journey through the connections between IP and people, communities, institutions, and academic disciplines. As with any good journey, we’ll stop to observe and take snapshots of what we see. We’ll explore and describe the world of personal wealth and IP from a number of different perspectives.

Our constant theme will be the relationship between building people’s wealth and IP. I strongly believe in IP as a force for good, as did the founding fathers of the United States and merchants and rulers of Europe centuries ago. People should harness its power.

The book draws on experiences and examples. It covers people, communities, nations, wealth, pensions, education, economics, politics, governments, culture, and investment. I’ll examine this ecosystem through the lens of the individual and IP. More specifically, the underpinning idea is that people can build their wealth by ensuring that IP works for them. They must learn what’s going on around them so that they are better informed to decide what to do and with whom.

The book doesn’t neatly fall into categories like investment, anthropology, sociology, economics, law, politics, or philosophy. Rather, it integrates or synthesizes a different position and new a genre which exists above or to one side of these, but is not a subset of any of them. One thesis of the book is that these categories skew the beneficial outcome of IP for citizens. To treat what we’ll call citizen IPR, which creates wealth for the individual, as merely a subcategory is to miss the essence of this book.

I’ll describe how all of our IP can work together and how agencies impact on that. It’s difficult dealing with all IP under one heading, since the component elements come from different origins and have different characteristics. In the context of this book, however, I’ll attempt to do that to focus on wide-ranging issues. From this come new ideas, a new lexicon, and new governmental structures.

In that sense, the book highlights areas which can add to the development of an industrial strategy for the UK and help people secure wealth and improve personal well-being. It points to a change of emphasis on the part of government, communities, and people so that problems are no longer considered in terms of health, law and order, and community. These are only the symptoms; the causes can run much deeper and are less well understood. Maybe this book can help in a very small way to promote longer-term solutions. It can add to personal motivations and a national strategy.

So this book is about looking at personal well-being through the lens of people generating wealth for themselves, their families, their communities, and their nation through IPR creation and exploitation. It is a complex narrative that spans many disciplines. I’ve not seen this attempted elsewhere. Nonetheless, I think it’s important to look at the world through a lens other than economics or politics.

At a personal level – as a parent, teacher, friend, or colleague – what advice do you give people who ask you about the decisions you take regarding your own life? Maybe this book can add in a small way to an understanding of the environment. The health, law-and-order, and community issues, I suggest, are symptoms of other forces at play. Harness those forces to work for you, and you have a path forward.

People try to create order in their lives based upon what they know, and then they have to deal with changes. With factors outside of their knowledge, all they can really do is go with the flow. They receive most of their input from their peer and social groups, and that limits their experience.

In reality, what the Internet is showing us is that no one knows. People are working to create a framework within which individuals in all walks of life can take their own decisions. Naomi Klein, in her book No Logo, looked at the effect on Third World countries and their peoples of outsourcing one part of the value-creation process to support one type of IPR-based activity – that of trademark/brand management. I take a different approach. I want to show how more people can harness IP for progress as articulated by the US founding fathers.

In this book, I want to provide insights that people, community leaders, politicians, and professionals can use to create a better future for themselves and others. There may be parts of this you know already – perhaps you know all of it. Some parts might be new or looked at in a different way. Personally, I haven’t seen the totality of it brought together under one cover. So in that sense, it may offer something new.

I want to develop a different thesis, which is that nations, communities, and people need to bring their game up to that of the US and global best-in-class in IPR management. This will have a fundamental impact on people’s lives and families. I also want to share some insights with people so that rather than buying into a dream created by a different nation and published on consumer media, they can take informed decisions and lead more fulfilling and rewarding lives. They should also engage with and direct their politicians to understand the issues and focus government efforts in the right places.

At the heart of many of the above are the dynamics of IP in one form or another. Money gravitates towards those who own the IPR, exploit the IPR in various ways, know the rules of IPR, or manage IPR successes and failures. IPR has emerged through many different strands of law from many countries. I suggest that these be unified in one theory.

I try to avoid the language of economics or politics with which many of these issues are typically discussed. I do so deliberately, but I can’t always escape it. It’s a necessary component in part. The use of this language and its accompanying concepts is a real barrier for those who create intellectual property and must engage with those who influence industries (politicians, lawyers, economists). It is also inadequate for dialogue relating to these issues.

Regrettably, IPR generators and exploiters are forced to use the language of economists and politicians, but never the other way around. Therein hangs a challenge. There’s a presumption that certain disciplines, like economics and politics, are of a higher order than, say, science, music, or writing – the fields of IPR creators. These latter professions have been relegated to advisors to the former in their decision-making. And yet, it was the latter who created some of the wealth that arguably allowed the former to practice their professions. Somehow, I’m not comfortable with that.

Many will read this book and say of some of its parts, I knew that already or that’s obvious. What I’m asking readers to do is to digest all of it and draw their own conclusions as to why lives turn out the way they do in the UK and other non-US countries, whereas lives in the US appear more successful. This leads to the question of what we can do to improve people’s lives in our own country by improving the way we generate and exploit IPR across the total economy – and to questions about how the government spends taxes and to what effect.

I make observations about politics, IP, and people’s lives. We can’t divorce IPR – an instrument of government and law – from its administration. Neither can we decouple IP from people’s lives and communities, which is what this book is about. In that sense, one could say it is political.

I’ve been an observer and participant in economic developments over decades in many countries. I’ve also spent a significant part of my life in international business. Along the way, I’ve seen and witnessed successes and failures in a range of countries, both corporate and personal. And I have always ended up asking why. It’s a curiosity which has led to this book.

I’ve witnessed political and governmental initiatives as politicians work to create better economies, save and support some people, and help others thrive. I’ve witnessed business people either encourage an initiative or walk away, depending on their perception of whether or not it works for them and supports their beliefs.

I’ve seen huge volumes of good decent people trapped in an economic existence from which they can’t escape, and worked to build a routine and a reference model within which they and their families could survive. If I’d stripped away the buildings, urban areas, and industry, back to the bare earth from which they toiled to extract existence – food – they’d get by.

I’ve seen equal if not more volumes of good decent people thrive who are arguably no more intelligent or capable than the others but are deemed to be in the right place at the right time. Where one should be is dependent on more than this. The state has to continue to step in to provide welfare, pensions, and job-creation programs for people who haven’t made the cut, or who have fallen off the conveyor belt. But should it be to the extent of half the population, as it seems today in Western Europe?

Something deeper has to be at work beyond supply and demand, economics (movement of capital, goods, and labour), interest rates, or taxation – those things which occupy our national consciousness through the daily media. I want to try and link IP to people’s lives, understand how some people benefit from it, and explain why others are unable to access the benefits of IPR – and more importantly, why they should think more about IP in their daily lives.

What I want to do is link intellectual property to what I’ve observed. I want to join the dots, perhaps in unconventional ways, and maybe provide some new perspectives. Most comments I see deal with what I consider to be symptoms rather than root causes of what we witness. I want to reach into root causes. Business has taught me that if you fix the root cause, you end up with a better chance of a solution.

I know that not all my information or arguments will be correct, and I shan’t have researched this adequately – it’s a major task. But I have to make a start and let others add to it and develop the themes with me. This is a journey.

I don’t think this book could have been written by an American because Americans view the world in a very different way. Similarly, it could not have been written without an understanding of international business from a US perspective. Bookshelves are full of personal, social, and business books written in the US which are exported and devoured in other countries as best-in-class. But is adopting US-conditioned views the smart thing to do, or are these views only applicable as templates for success and life in a society which is more successful at managing IPR?

Perhaps this book could not have been written by a US academic who wouldn’t have my perspective. Most economic and perhaps political theory emanates from the US. Economics is mainly advanced theoretically by the victors – those with the dominant economy and wealth. In contrast, I’ll look at the world through the eyes of the country which provided so much foundation of economic thought, IPR, and the US Constitution but comparatively is viewed as struggling economically but improving. It’s a fascinating narrative which I’ve stumbled upon, and one that US economists and politicians probably don’t see as they advance their theories from within their own economic environment.

Let’s look at the world from the perspective of IPR created by man. Let’s call it iprology.

I’ve been fortunate in my path through life that I am able to create this book. Yet I think, in a perverse way, that a US academic could provide a more rigorous academic underpinning for this topic that allows non-US businesses to compete on level terms. There will be references to music, technology, law, and brands, but I’ll try to make it accessible. This is not a dry book in that sense. This is about the causes and effects of people benefitting from intellectual property.

Should you want a book based on theory, that’s for someone else to write.

For those who can’t read or write and depend upon visual images and spoken word for their insights and role models, this is an important book for you. Our lives depend on intellectual property which we can’t access or understand without the rigour of reading and writing, and therefore we make inappropriate choices. This, in turn, skews the intellectual-property landscape.

Whilst I delight in and acknowledge the evident success of so many inputs, my comments are general, and if some come across as negative, they’re not meant to be destructive but rather a spur to change for the future benefit of people.

Ultimately, this book is about how to manage and use IP for national and therefore personal advantage and benefit. Every man, woman, and child in each village and town in the UK is dependant for his or her lifetimes and their families’ well-being upon the effectiveness of the people within the nation in creating IPR and exploiting it. This crosses occupational and geographic barriers and requires us all to work together.

To the person who wants the one-liner, I say, Consider how IP impacts individuals, communities, and societies.

To the person who wants the key recommendations, I did construct a chapter or two on that, but it became too much for this book to repeat what’s already written in the body of the book and is nuanced by person, community, industry, and discipline. These can be explored by others.

To the person who feels there’s something profound going on and wants additional insights and opinions with which to develop his or her own thoughts and actions, I say, Read the book. I’ve tried my best, based on decades of studying and working in technology, media, and telecommunications, and still reaching into the future. They’re imperfect and incomplete views and opinions.

To the person who questions the lack of hard data, I explain that I wanted to get this book out and begin the debate, and I needed to make the topic accessible. In time, I trust and hope that we can populate the text with data as academicians and economists move from their existing models towards a better understanding of the role and value of IP in global and national economies as well as people’s daily lives.

The interesting thing is that those who opine on economies and the role of specific industries within those, and therefore the role of IP in those industries, do so from a very scant and imperfect data base. Nonetheless, significant decisions are made on the basis of suppositions, principle, and political/business judgements.

This is a wide-ranging book which could be of interest to a wide range of people. I try to show how ordinary people can benefit from their own and other people’s thoughts and ideas, which become intellectual property and enable their wealth. This is about recognising that there are opportunities locally

I also provide ideas and suggestions for politicians, economists, policy makers, lawmakers, educators, health professionals, and business people on routes forward to enable more people to benefit from the wealth arising from thoughts and ideas.

1

Ideas: A Force for Good

In this chapter, I want to stride across the landscape and provide illustrations of the role of IP in different industries and how it affects those industries and ultimately people. A theme of this book is that IP should be viewed through the lens of people and not industries, but I do want to illustrate all the ways IP manifests itself.

Copyrights, patents, trademarks, industrial-design rights, and trade secrets have emerged in different industries that have different ways of making money. Yet at their root is the fact that IP is the creation of a man or woman irrespective of how it’s commercialised today. Adopting a one-size-fits-all approach to this will create challenges to the reader who knows of exceptions or other ways, but please stick with me as I try to develop a more general thesis. Most treatment of IP tends to be industry-specific, as with music and pharmaceuticals; IPR-specific, as with copyrights and patents; or nation-specific, as with US software patents and Chinese patent infringements.

According to Confucian ethics, copying someone else’s ideas is the highest form of compliment, as embodied now in manga (the Japanese comic books on the high street). On the other hand, it’s known that in ancient Chinese societies, people suffered when they stole someone else’s ideas. Even before formal rights to intellectual property were embodied and codified in national laws, people could lose their hands, arms, and head for tampering with someone else’s ideas.

The science and technology that underpins so much IP does not have its roots, solely and exclusively, in Western civilisations. Islamic and Chinese science contributed to the development of Western science. Music and art have evolved globally over tens of thousands of years. It was, however, the formalisation of patents, copyright, trademarks, and craft guilds by the Western governments or royalty of the day that gave legitimacy to IP before it was first called by that name in the US.

There must have been unwritten IPR rules between East and West, since trade thrived along the silk and other routes without the benefit of formal IPR, which did not emerge until much later. Trade existed before IPR laws came into being in Europe and before the creation of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. There must have been methods of resolving disputes.

Today, the argument for the existence and awarding of IPR in its various forms is that it:

• encourages and enables ideas to come to the benefit of a wider public rather than just being available to and possibly used by the inventor and forgotten as an innovation

• encourages and enables the commercialisation of ideas without fear of damaging copying

• allows industries to be built through the use and reuse of IPR under controlled conditions – even a number of firms using the same IPR under licensing terms

• allows people to be rewarded for their ideas

• helps people improve their world and provides access to products and services which otherwise they would not have had

• provides a convenient reference base, through branding and trademarks, by which individuals can make purchasing decisions without complicated analysis – for example, a quality brand can provide endorsement for quality products whilst a low-cost brand can provide a referral to low-cost products or services – and enables them to make personal referrals and endorsement through word of mouth.

The UK IPR landscape

Viewing the IPR landscape from a UK perspective, we encounter many different types of IPR in our daily lives, although some of it is now exhausted.

• Patents: The full range of patent classifications is covered by a WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) list, and includes items such as computer-assisted patents and agricultural genetics. Among the specific patented items we commonly encounter are cruise control, microwave oven, deodorant, ATM, starting gate, Teflon, soft-serve ice cream, nylon, fibreglass, beach ball, Polaroid sunglasses, shopping cart, bass guitar, programming language, Phillips screw, parking meter, toilet brush, staple remover, cheesesteak, bubble gum, garage-door opener, and cheeseburger.

• Copyright: Beatles music, Rolling Stones music, Lord of the Rings books and films, and all artwork are among the things that fall under copyright.

• Brands and trademarks: Many are registered, including Ford, Apple, Google, and Tesco. This can also include passing off rights in the UK.

• Industrial designs: Car grills and rears, semiconductors, integrated-circuit layout, Aston Martin cars, iPad, and other designs are among those protected.

• Geographical indication: GI is a name or sign used on certain products which corresponds to a specific geographical location or origin (such as a town, region, or country). The use of a GI may act as a certification that the product possesses certain qualities, is made according to traditional methods, or enjoys a certain reputation due to its geographical origin. Examples include Stilton cheese and Bordeaux wines. This is a rapidly growing area of IPR.

• Trade secrets: We clearly don’t know about those! But they would generally fall into the category of know-how that a firm would use to obtain a competitive advantage. Such secrets can be wide-ranging.

• Database rights: Databases implemented in computers and systems receive protection comparable to copyright in recognition of investment in the database.

• Plant-breeder’s rights: These would cover, for example, agricultural genetics and genetically modified crops.

UK success stories

The UK is a success story for many aspects of IP, and I detail some of those successes here. I do so to provide a background. Some readers will know these stories already, but it adds to the completeness of the book to give real-world examples.

Retail

McKinsey & Company has stated that the UK is the retail capital of the world, with sophisticated brands and trademarks. Typically, nationwide chains in any segment of the high street amount to about four different chains (banks or retail or petrol stations) for ten thousand communities in the UK. A typical chain can range as high as four thousand to five thousand outlets, although that’s rare, with the more typical volume market operating at two thousand retail outlets.

Online shopping is forcing a change in this, as we see on the high street up and down the country. Supermarkets, speciality stores, banks, and restaurants have all found a way to do business online. Consistency throughout the IP is the trademark and the brand, which work extensively to create a theme or a feel for the experience. But the IP at work in the supply chain is also a major factor.

Despite a lower US land cost or taxation, the UK retail chain is a more profitable entity than the US version. This is an endorsement of the power of IPR in attracting business and justifying a higher prices for the products. A significant advertising and PR campaign is a carefully targeted effort to drive traffic and customers through the retail outlet. Examples of successful retail brands are Tesco, Marks and Spencer, and Boots.

Fashion

Fashion is another carefully managed IPR-based industry. From the strength of the brand through to design rights (covering stitching, look, buttons, etc.) and trademark, the fashion industry has very carefully worked its IPR assets. In some instances, patents may be a factor as well as copyright. Some fashion houses only allow their products to be marketed under certain conditions, such as back-of-the-store in an upmarket retail outlet, or against a background of a specific design or colour in order to portray the products in the best light.

The UK is a very successful fashion IPR exploiter and uses a variety of IPR techniques, including celebrity endorsement, which are uniquely tied to that sole product. Examples in the UK include Burberry and Lillywhites. International examples would include Nike and Adidas. The skill of the fashion house may be adopted by retail outlets through their own in-house brands or trademarks as a mechanism for improving prices and margins on their own products. This type of alternative branding for similar goods often occurs in retail.

Individual nations have their own IP successes. Switzerland, for example, is known for its watches. These are carefully trademarked and marketed, although a significant portion of so-called Swiss watches use the same internal workings from Casio as much less distinguished timepieces. This demonstrates the power of the intellectual property (trademark) in creating value from the same base. Similar situations can be found in cars and computers.

The search for improved margins often drives fashion houses to manufacture products in developing countries with lower operating costs, using raw materials sourced from yet another country. This provides an opportunity for less scrupulous outsourcers to copy the products and sell them in the same or similar markets themselves under a category of trade known as IPR theft. This can range from branded fake goods to use of copyrighted materials. Often, these products are exactly the same as the originals, made on the same machines, by the same labour, but coming out of the factory during the night shift to be sold through different channels.

Drinks

The UK has a very successful drinks industry. Indeed, in The Competitive Advantage of Nations by Michael E. Porter, whisky is identified as the one of the largest world exports from the UK. Yes, its taste varies from brand to brand, but the brand and trademark IPR management has been carefully managed.

Diageo is a very successful IPR management company with a stable of globally dominant brands and trademarks. The management of the IPR ranges from the shape of the bottle to the design and colour of the label to the point-of-sale promotional items at the counter and storefront. The unseen workings of back-office systems, logistics, and market research also contain their own IP.

Food

Food is another significant IPR-based product, depending on brand, trademark, and packaging design for positioning and endorsement, thereby attracting a carefully segmented group of customers and enabling better pricing to be derived from the products. Some food brands can only be found in certain retail outlets – such as niche market products in high-quality outlets such as Harrods. Others are more generally available mass-market brands such as those found on Tesco, Sainsbury’s, or Lidl shelves. In this instance, brands have to compete with Tesco’s or Sainsbury’s own brands for positioning, shelf space, and customers. An example of successful IPR management in food is Unilever, with its range of brands.

Pharmaceuticals

Pharmaceuticals offer another major UK IPR success story. Patents combine with brand names and trademarks to deliver health benefits and strong companies. The UK has always had a strong heritage in chemistry and is a world leader in that discipline. This has spawned strong pharmaceutical companies which today have also embraced the biology disciplines of biotech to offer new IPR-based products and services. Examples of successful IPR-based pharmaceutical industries include GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca.

Pharmaceuticals have long research-and-development and regulatory timescales (ten-plus years) before they become recognised products. The literature can quote costs ranging between $800 million and $2.6 billion for developing a drug across both successes and failures. However, before the patents have been granted, the brand and channels must be thought through to position a new product in the market. These costs are included in the final sums quoted by large pharmaceutical companies. They can be replicated in other large industries, such as automotive.

As in many other industries, small start-up ventures can achieve success with significantly less capital (but more corporate risk) to bring a product to market which the large company would abandon for fear of product cannibalisation or other priorities on resources. The products are sold and distributed through the NHS (National Health Service) and private health systems, high-street pharmacists, supermarkets, and online channels.

Such has been the perceived reaction to the pricing power of pharmaceuticals in the UK that pressure groups have been advocating for no IPR products to be made available to frontier or underdeveloped countries where the economy cannot afford effective drugs. This will clearly create advantages in the importing country but could impact the livelihoods of people in the originating countries.

Utilities

Utilities deliver services (energy, water, waste removal) to homes and businesses. In this respect, gas, electricity, and water industries have successfully used the IPR of brand and trademark to develop their businesses from a UK base – Centrica, for example. There may be patent-able elements of development and utilisation in some aspects of the activity, such as engineering, exploration, and back-office systems of monitoring, billing, network management, and alternative-energy development (solar/wind), but it is mainly the customer-facing brand and trademark development in addition to billing skills, distribution network, wholesale price management, and service that are most noticeable. Each of these may have a small component of IP.

During the 2000s, as the government of the day strove for greater integration with Europe, freer trade, and so on, many of the UK’s utility businesses were bought by operators in France, Spain, and other countries using the currency advantages and reduction in cross-border trade barriers. This was defended as globalisation. What is interesting here is that they either kept the same brand – as with Thames Water and British Airways – or created new brands, such as Veolia, which maintained or created new appeal to British people but avoided the antagonism of people reacting to British utilities being run by foreign companies.

I don’t recall there being an equal trade in the opposite direction, with British firms buying European utilities. I can understand many of the reasons why that didn’t happen, having been involved in European business leadership and M & A (mergers and acquisitions).

Media

This is an interesting area, because within common consciousness, media refers to daily newspapers, consumer magazines, and television – consumer media. But of course, media extends to Internet-based media, digital media, social media, business-to-business media, narrowcast teaching media, advertising, fine-arts materials, biotech growth cultures, business events, conferences, and more. Looking forward, there are exciting new media forms and models emerging.

Copyright, trademark, and brand feature very strongly in this sector, which depends upon a large community of freelancers who are paid for their contributions. Copyright agencies enable people to be paid, and the wealth finds its way back to the intellectual-property creator. Brands and trademarks are professionally and carefully nurtured to appeal to a target audience.

It’s quite interesting to see how Top Right Group manages its stable of brands targeting niche markets. It used to be consumer and business-to-business and newspapers (when it was called Emap), but these days, as the Internet has progressed, the company has regressed into the business-to-business markets where IPR gives it some better protection and returns. This is now replicated in digital media, either by print versions moving online or new products being created.

The models remain similar: they depend upon advertising, subscriptions, or editorial contributions to attract revenue from a carefully cultivated customer base. The media business then takes this revenue and apportions it to IPR-protected contributors and owners – the former protected by copyright and maybe trademark and brand whilst the latter use another IPR mix to create debt and equity rewards.

The TV and newspaper sagas are more in the public domain. Sky’s success (as part of News International) has been built over time through brand, copyright, trademark, sports rights, film-window rights, and so on. But it shouldn’t be ignored that the BBC’s market presence is built not only on the government-awarded charter but also its brand/trademark, copyright, patents (from its research and development division), and distribution capability. Those who provide their services – actors, presenters, musicians, scriptwriters, performers, cameramen – do so under their own IPR, whether through their own private company or employment contract. Repeats provide multiple income opportunities for these people through royalties.

On the other hand, commercial channels depend more on advertising than licence fees for revenues – for example, ITV. That perhaps is the more visible intellectual property. Invisible intellectual property includes the show’s formats, copyright, image rights, and technologies for recording, managing, and distribution – all embodied in patents and brands sold to these broadcasters by the entrepreneurs with channels into these distribution companies. In reality, only a few independent production companies (indies) make money from selling shows, films, and the like to these channels.

Entertainment, music, and film

These are industries that have received a significant amount of IPR attention over the last ten-plus years, as the Internet enabled new services to emerge – and enabled online piracy of film and music. Online piracy continues to be the subject of government review, new laws and regulations, and intense lobbying by consumers, citizens, industry groups, creators, and performers. As I write, this was brought home to me by talking to two jazz singers after their recent concert locally. They said that their album sales had plummeted due to online piracy from businesses in, for example, Thailand.

The UK’s film industry, like other countries’, has government support. The argument goes that without it, the UK would find it difficult to maintain a film industry against the might of Hollywood. The industry has received various grants and tax breaks to encourage mainly the production of British films on UK soil. There’s a focus on such production facilities as Pinewood, Elstree, and Shepperton.

Additionally, many parts of the UK have benefited from having been used as locations for film production, including international productions, for a variety of reasons – a UK-specific story, strength and depth of the production facilities, or financial incentives. But there are stand-alone successes, including the James Bond franchise which has sustained Pinewood for some time.

Viewed from the US perspective, the UK is an international window of exhibition in its distribution model, and generally follows US distribution and at a marginal cost. Studios believe that distribution is the vital ingredient to financial success. These film-industry windows of exhibition or distribution channels to market are important to an understanding of the context of the UK film industry and IP. The Internet is forcing rapid change in these channels, but conceptually they remain an important part of the film industries’ economics. The schematic on the opposite page gives an idea of the windows of exhibition, but they can vary significantly.

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With the Internet, film download and piracy has been a thorn in the industry’s side. It’s being addressed partially through better digital-rights management and new laws and regulations.

The music industry has faced similar challenges and is using similar techniques to protect the value of its merchandise. Theatres, concert halls, recordings, and broadcast are all part of a thriving industry. The Apple recording studios were home to the Beatles; Abba was Sweden’s largest export at one time. But the UK music industry also has been subjected to the strength of the US music industry as it emerged from Motown, RCA, and others and landed on UK streets heavily promoted and at a competitive price and issue, a factor that was investigated numerous times by the UK government.

Today, companies such as Kobalt uses sophisticated algorithms to find out where music is being used and manage IPR a different way so that the company can collect revenues for artists and songwriters and disrupt the traditional models. But behind the glamour and glitz of film, music, and entertainment designed to seductively and beguilingly attract audiences, viewers, and listeners lies an IPR world. A significant amount of the wealth is made through the exploitation of IPR.

Hollywood has always believed in the secret to box-office success being a good story told well. And so it has crafted narratives, images, and words that entice audiences to suspend disbelief. They create an illusion. That belief extends to the narratives about the stars, producers, special effects, and award ceremonies. All are designed to attract customers.

Looking at it from an IPR perspective, there’s an industry of very advanced technology, formats, repurposing skills, scriptwriters, score writers, equipment-rental companies, musicians, technicians, workflow systems, rights-management technologies and systems, lawyers, accountants, stars, choruses, manufacturing, consumer equipment companies – all of whom derive a livelihood by exercising their IPR within the process.

I remember the chief technology officer of one of the major Hollywood studios telling me that "it took seventy years for technology to develop to the point where the story of Lord of the Rings by Tolkien could be told in film and on screen." That technology was built on IPR (patent), creating and delivering benefits to its creators or owners over those seventy years. The copyright to the book originally belonged to Tolkien, and he sold for £10,000. Those rights enabled films which grossed $2.9 billion on a production budget of approximately $300 million. One type of intellectual property had to be developed to commercialise another. They are heavily interdependent.

Lord of the Rings was based on many mythologies from many countries, but it is partially based on the myths, legends, and castles of 700, 1,000, 1,500 years earlier in North Wales. Those Welsh myths and legends had no IPR and were in an ancient little-known language that is still spoken locally today. They included the Mabinogion, Arthurian legends, and Celtic mythology, and other stories Tolkien had read. Tolkien had also studied and taught the mediaeval Welsh language. He incorporated its structures and sounds into the Sindarin language. The Red Book of Westmarch was probably based on the Red Book of Hergest – an ancient Welsh text which includes some of the Mabinogion. The locations which inspired Middle Earth include Sussex and Warwickshire, but also perhaps Barmouth and Harlech Castle in North Wales, near which Tolkien holidayed and to which he returned regularly.

Clearly, Welsh myths and legends would have little value in their original Welsh language (small audience) but huge value in English, the largest language on earth. So the financial value in The Lord of the Rings is to take some unknown local myths and legends with no IPR (too early) in a little-known ancient Welsh language, based in a little-known geography of North Wales (no geographic indications) and weave it into a new copyrighted work in English and commercialize it in a different medium (film). Of the influence of the Welsh language which Tolkien had learnt, he is quoted as saying:

If I may once more refer to my work. The Lord of the Rings, in evidence: the names of persons and places in this story were mainly composed on patterns deliberately modelled on those of Welsh (closely similar but not identical). This element in the tale has given perhaps more pleasure to more readers than anything else in it.

Tolkien incorporated these myths, legends, and language patterns into a far larger work drawing on wide-ranging myths and legends from far more countries to create a new work of mythology for England (which apparently had too little, according to Tolkien), written in the largest language on earth and using new IPR technology to bring it to the screen.

Had IP been available centuries ago, time differences aside, and if Welsh was a global language, this work could conceptually have brought significant wealth to the deprived area of North Wales which would benefit people, families, and communities. Fewer youngsters and people would have had to leave, keeping families and communities intact. To help them obtain their wealth from IPR, there are organisations such as Performing Rights Society (PRS), Phonographic Performance Ltd (PPL), European Motion Picture Association (EURMPA), Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), and many others who work to collect their part of the copyright royalties and