James Pinkerton discusses Brazil's recent move to appropriate patents:

To an outside observer, it's apparent that the Brazilians clearly want to have it all three ways: being needy when it suits them, being export-y as they are able, being greedy when they think they can get away with it -- and if that last stance hurts the U.S. economy, too bad. It's a little complicated, and a little bewildering. And yet Uncle Sam's answer to the "Brazil Bewilderment" will help determine America's own wealth, and health, in the 21st Century.

He quotes the WSJ on the broader context:

Mary Anastasia O'Grady wrote, "The possible compulsory licensing of AIDS drugs is only part of Brazil's wider assault on intellectual property rights. While China and India are promising to firm up protections and sucking in capital investment, Brazil seems bent on joining the likes of Cuba, Iran and Venezuela.

He also dissects the reaction of the NYT:

As the Times sneeringly put it, "Right-wing groups in the United States and pharmaceutical manufacturers are calling this theft, and several members of Congress have asked the United States trade representative to apply trade sanctions."

And compares that with the view of the Financial Times:

According to a June 22 article in The Financial Times that ran the same day, under the headline, "Brazil is yielding farms that can feed the world," Brazil is on its way to becoming "a pivotal nation in the future of world trade. Brazil is to agriculture what India is to business offshoring and China to manufacturing: a powerhouse whose size and efficiency few competitors can match."

As the FT details, Brazil now enjoys the largest agricultural trade surplus in the world, and the country's balance of trade is helped enormously by IP theft, which often goes by the more polite name of "compulsory licensing." But by any name, it's still theft, and theft is "zero sum."