North-South Conflicts in Intellectual Property Rights

In: Peace review: the international quarterly of world peace, Volume 12, Issue 4, p. 501-508

Abstract

Argues that Western intellectual property rights regimes have become a major source of North-South inequality by virtue of their capacity to prevent the transfer of technology & facilitate the appropriation of indigenous knowledge from Third World countries. Digital-age patents not only give northern countries a monopoly on knowledge that evolved in indigenous cultures, but allow them to sell that knowledge to poor countries of the South, pushing them further into poverty/debt. An overview of the history of patents notes how patents & charters were once used to create property rights to conquered lands. Their background as tools of conquest undergirds current patents produced by the General Agreement for Trade & Tariffs & the World Trade Organization (WTO). Although biopiracy robs the Third World of its biological heritage through the WTO's Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement, the US claims patents on life forms are essential for sustaining the biotechnology industry. The ethical, ecological, & economic implications of patenting life are discussed, along with movements to prevent further biopiracy in Third World countries. J. Lindroth