Season 1
Episode #6 // The wrap-up
In the season one finale of IP Provocations, we’re joined by barrister Amy Surkis to reflect on the series and ponder what we’ve learned. Amy is an expert IP barrister and was our stellar research assistant this season. We chat about what has surprised us and stuck with us from across the series. In particular, we unpack the interplay between patent systems, and broader socio-economic systems, and the extent to which patent laws replicate existing inequalities. How does the patent system act as a feedback loop, rewarding wealth and privilege with more wealth and privilege? And what can we do about it?
Episode #5 // On Australia's First inventors - and living sustainably together
In this very special episode of IP Provocations, Rebecca and Kim talk to Larissa Behrendt about First Nations innovation - and what we can learn from the people who lived sustainably in the land now known as Australia for over 65,000 years.
Drawing upon the themes of Behrendt’s new documentary series The First Inventors, Behrendt speaks about how First Nations’ technologies can tackle climate change, and how Indigenous storytelling, governance and kinship systems are integral to First Nations innovation. She talks about First Nations invention as an entire system of cultural knowledges and understandings sitting outside the Western IP system, and how The First Inventors highlights best practice, Indigenous-led research collaboration.
Episode #4 // Greed v Need: Does the patent system incentivise the right things? Part Two
In part 2 of this extended conversation with activist Achal Prabhala and the WTO’s Tony Taubman, we pick up where we left off, asking if the approach taken to the Medicines Patent Pool could also be used to drive our response to the climate emergency.
We then tackle a host of thorny patent issues. Should we focus on the distribution of knowledge, and not just generating more of it? Just how bad is the problem of patent trolls? Why are Moderna and Pfizer facing messy legal disputes over the IP behind COVID-19 vaccines? What did the controversial TRIPS waiver actually do? And what are the limits of patents in incentivising innovation?
Episode #3 // Greed v Need: Does the patent system incentivise the right things? Part One
This episode’s guests are Antony Taubman Director of the Intellectual Property, Government Procurement and Competitive Division of the World Trade Organisation (WTO)and Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Law School, and Achal Prabhala, a Bangalore-based activist, writer, researcher and filmmaker.
Our chat centres around the pharmaceutical industry. How are skewed incentives prioritising the lives of rich people over poor people? How is the patent system like high jumping? What impact is the UN’s Medicines Patent Pool having on equalising access to medicine? And are universities falling into the trap of seeing patents as the most important validation of their research agenda?
Episode #2 // Inventors are white men - or are they? Patents, race and gender
In 2022, just 1.8 per cent of Australian patent applications were by all-women teams, but half were all-male teams, according to research from Dr Vicki Huang.
In this episode of IP Provocations, we dig into the question of who the system recognises as inventors, and who it excludes. What is the correlation between patent protection and racial violence? Why is the stereotypical image of an inventor so often a white man like Thomas Edison or Elon Musk? And if the patent system excludes certain types of knowledge while favouring others, is it really doing its job of ensuring we all benefit from great ideas?
This episode’s guests are Dr Anjali Vats Associate Professor of Law, with a secondary appointment in Communication, at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and Dr Jessica Lai Associate Professor in the School of Accounting and Commercial Law at the Victoria University of Wellington.
Episode #1 // Is patent law writing cheques it can’t cash?
In this first episode of IP Provocations, we drill experts Janet Freilich and John Liddicoat about the extent to which the promises patent law makes match up with what happens in practice. Is the system working as it’s supposed to? Are patents incentivising the types of innovation we want most? Do we still see scientific breakthroughs without them? What would happen if every patent was actually enforced? And why on earth do people go to the effort of maintaining patents long after they realise the invention they’re protecting is useless?