The Economist, 17 Feb 1995, p. 17. Should foreigners' intellectual property always be protected? [Excerpts] Is it right to expect governments, especially poor ones, to honour new World Trade Organization rules on intellectual property? Some economists have made a good case that slack enforcement of such rules may sometimes do little harm. Local firms benefit by acquiring pirated technology more cheaply than the real thing; consumers acquire affordable high-tech products and close copies of branded goods. Although the original producers of the intellectual property lose out, it is sometimes hard to tell how much. They might anyway have sold nothing in a poor country at rich prices. And provided that counterfeiters make reasonably faithful copies, piracy is free publicity: how many Chinese would know about Microsoft's latest programs, or listen to Michael Jackson's new album, had they not been able to buy illegal imitations? ... It is not always obvious what theft is. Much in patent and copyright law is arbitrary. But who says American copyright law is correct? More to the point, why should China accept America's view of how a drug design, say, should be accorded patent protection? In some cases, the interests of rich and poor countries are clearly at odds: one side has all the property. There seems to be no objective standard to appeal to. Eventually, this may change: as poor countries produce more innovations themselves, their own inventors will demand greater protection. Meanwhile, the lot of many intellectual-property producers will not be a happy one.