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very year on April 26, the international community marks World Intellectual Property (IP) day. The celebration provides a great opportunity to think, reflect and discuss about issues relating to IP.

It is never an easy topic; apart from IP practitioners, many seem to avoid the subject of IP. For this reason, there are many misconceptions surrounding IP, such as the idea that IP deals mostly with legal issues or that different IP rights actually overlap with each other.

In fact, IP is not only about law and legal affairs, and patents, copyrights, industrial designs, trademarks, brand, geographical indications and trade secrets are all forms of IP that are distinct from each other and in no way overlap.

Arguably, out of the many misconceptions of IP, the gravest one is the belief that IP and IP policy operate in a vacuum. IP itself, it is not only about a body of law that grants and protects patents for rocket science or space exploration.

The subject of IP is central in many global policy issues, such as in the discourse of access to medicine and public health, in climate change and renewable energy, as well as in the global value chain and international trade.

IP is also present in our everyday life, there are copyrights for the songs, books and movies we listen to, read and watch.

There are trademark and trade secrets in our favorite detergents and our favorite instant noodles. There are patents in our mobile phones and in the medicine that our doctors prescribe us.

IP is there in the everyday life of everyone, and therefore IP should be present in any policy-making endeavors, including in Indonesia. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has been moving in the right direction by calling for a shift from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based economy, focusing on the importance of Indonesia’s competitiveness.

Economists would agree that this is the right direction to avoid the middle-income trap, a situation where a middle-income country, like Indonesia today, can no longer compete internationally because wages are relatively too high while productivity is relatively too low rendering it unable to compete in high-value addition activities.

Indonesia’s economy still relies heavily on extractive industries, with a manufacturing sector that is dominated by low-value assembly of products designed and manufactured elsewhere.

According to the latest report of the World Intellectual Property Organization, a third of the value of the products that global consumers buy today comes from intangibles such as technology and branding. The global economy no longer operates in a world of scarcity, but a world of plenty, where firms compete with value addition and distinct features of the same kind of product.

For example, without having a single cocoa plantation, Switzerland’s chocolate brands are among the most prized in the world. This is in contrast with Indonesia, the third-largest exporter of cocoa, with no international market leader in chocolate products. The share of value addition, by technology or branding, remains below 20 percent of Indonesia’s total exports. While 40 percent of Malaysia’s exports are from value addition.

In the latest Global Innovation Index, Singapore is ranked first, while Indonesia ranks 87th, putting it in seventh spot among the 10 ASEAN member countries. For Indonesia to be able to compete in today’s global economy and join the ranks of high-income countries, it needs to realize its vision of a knowledge economy.

This is why it is important to put IP in the bigger picture.

The government agencies in Indonesia that, by mandate, have to deal on IP policies are the Directorate General of Intellectual Property (DGIP) at the Law and Human Rights Ministry and the Creative Economy Agency (Bekraf). Both agencies have been doing very well.

The DGIP has been progressively modernizing Indonesia’s IP laws and regulations that amount to a more comprehensive, effective and efficient national IP system; Bekraf has been focusing on IP facilitation through the so-called 3Si strategy (KreaSI, protekSI, and komersialisaSI).

However it will not be easy for both the DGIP and Bekraf to realize their visions and missions, if IP is not one of Indonesia’s priorities for national development strategy. The term “intellectual property” only appears four times in Indonesia’s Long Term National Development Planning (RPJP) 2005-2025.

There is a need for an IP policy that emphasizes effective linkage among all actors and stakeholders of Indonesia’s innovation-governance system. IP policies cannot operate in a vacuum, all stakeholders should support well-integrated national development planning that propagates the culture of innovation and connects knowledge creation to the commercialization of intellectual assets, which then in turn translates into economic development.

It is high time to pay more attention to IP, innovation and creativity is the engine of economic growth in an increasingly knowledge-based global economy.

IP has to be present in all public policy strategy, ranging from education, research and technology, industry, finance, trade, health and even foreign policy. IP should also be a part of the “mental revolution” of Indonesia’s society, Indonesians do not only extract natural resources, Indonesians are not only consumers, Indonesians should also be the source of ideas, knowledge, innovation and progress.
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