IN the 19th century, the United States was both a rapidly industrializing nation and -- as Charles Dickens, among others, knew all too well -- a bold pirate of intellectual property.
But these days, when it comes to dealing with developing nations around the world, the United States seems to be ignoring its own swashbuckling heritage. Or at least that's the implication of a recent report by the international Commission on Intellectual Property Rights. The report recommends that the World Trade Organization's treaty on intellectual property rights be made much more flexible so that developing nations, from Brazil to Bangladesh, can adopt rules more at their own pace.
The global debate over intellectual property rights -- patents, copyrights and trademarks -- is focused mainly on forward-looking industries like computer software, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. But Americans can look back to this nation's 19th-century experience in book publishing, for example, to understand the developing world's viewpoint.
Back then, American law offered copyright protection -- but only to citizens and residents of the United States. The works of English authors were copied with abandon and sold cheap to an American public hungry for books. This so irritated Mr. Dickens -- whose ''Christmas Carol'' sold for 6 cents a copy in America, versus $2.50 in England -- that he toured the United States in 1842, urging the adoption of international copyright protection as being in the long-term interest of American authors and publishers.