Hawai'i urged to profit from its culture
By Sean Hao
Advertiser Staff Writer
Words such as hula, aloha and Kona have a certain cachet worldwide. Profiting from such unique cultural creations should be a key component in the state's efforts to develop its economy, according to an intellectual property rights expert in Honolulu this week.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
Bruce Lehman, who'll speak tomorrow at a breakfast sponsored by Enterprise Honolulu, said Hawai'i has several advantages when it comes to profiting from its unique music and arts.
Bruce Lehman, president of the International Intellectual Property Institute, says the marketing of unique cultural creations should help develop Hawai'i's economy.
"This is a tropical island," said Lehman, president for the International Intellectual Property Institute. "This is a nice place to be. And Hawai'i has an audience that exceeds the population.
"You have millions of tourists that come here every year, so you have an audience for the art."
To take advantage of that, though, the state needs to model its entertainment industry along the lines of areas such as Nashville, Tenn., which largely because of the Grand Ole Opry radio show became a hub for country music, Lehman said. Then there's Jamaica, which has its own well-recognized culture along with a $1.2 billion Reggae music industry worldwide, he added.
Similarly, Hawai'i's music industry, which isn't exactly unknown worldwide, could be a greater economic catalyst if more work were done building a critical mass of not just artists, but venues, publishers, entertainment and patent attorneys that could attract business from both the Mainland and Asia, Lehman said.
Intellectual property, which includes patents, copyrights and trademarks, is a means of protecting and profiting from ideas. As manufacturing jobs move overseas or are replaced by machines, the need to exploit intellectual property increases, Lehman said.
"You're not going to make much off ... back-breaking work," Lehman said.
The breakfast lecture on "Utilizing Hawai'i's intellectual property: Protecting our culture and developing our economy" will be held from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. tomorrow at the Hawaii Prince Hotel in Waikiki. The cost is $45. For more details, call Enterprise Honolulu at 521-3611 ext. 10.
"Any country that wants to advance has to look at harnessing the intellect of its people.
Talk tomorrow
"One of the things that you want to do long-term is look at those unique cultural activities and have an economic development strategy that secures these things that you own and then leverages those."
That's where the Internet could eventually help local artists distribute entertainment such as Hawaiian music. Currently, the Internet and file-sharing networks have become infamous for their ability to help people violate copyrights. But "as business models that are consumer-friendly and legitimate are developed things are going to change because Hawai'i's geographic isolation is not going to be a problem," Lehman said.
Compared to assets such as land or commodities such as oil, the potential to profit from ideas is unlimited, Lehman said.
"The capacity of the brain to create is infinite," he said. "There's only so much oil in the ground."
Reach Sean Hao at shao@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8093.
