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Justifications for copyrights, patents, & trade secrets are examined. The arguments that natural property results from the fruits of intellectual labor, & that such rights are deserved as a reward for this labor are found to be inadequate, as are arguments based on sovereignty, security, & privacy. The strongest argument for intellectual property -- that it provides the best possible mechanism for insuring the availability & widespread dissemination of intellectual works & their resulting products -- depends on unresolved empirical questions & thus is inconclusive. Intellectual property institutions are not as easily justified as is thought. AA

In perpetuating and exacerbating restricted access to essential medicines, current trade-related intellectual property rules on medicines may violate core human rights to health and medicines. In this light, there should be serious questions about their necessity, and their justification should be critically assessed from the perspective of human rights standards. These standards require that international trade rules on medicines be justified to the fullest extent possible, and permitted only to the extent to which they can be justified. In this article I explore the impact of trade rules on medicines access, and the growing force of the human right to health. I argue that the limited justification for strong patents in poor countries suggests the need for significant reform of trade-related intellectual property rights. I argue further that human rights standards may offer both normative and practical tools for achieving this reform and challenging trade rules on medicines at various levels. Adapted from the source document.

Considers whether the traditional rights accorded tangible property apply also to intellectual property, asserting that philosophical, legal, economic, & political bases for protecting these kinds of property differ significantly enough that equating the two forms of property is problematic. References. Adapted from the source document.

The traditional Onge people of the Indian Nicobar & Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal possess important indigenous knowledge & thus are attracting the intense interest of northern multinational corporations & associated wealth elites. Indigenous knowledge spans medicine, biology, & ecology & holds great wealth-maximizing potential. There is a strong public purpose interest in greater community access to indigenous knowledge-derived products, especially pharmaceuticals. The public purpose goals are best achieved by policies which preserve Onge social organization, & which protect the group's rights by insuring that key decisions about the disposition of its indigenous knowledge are left in its control. A critical factor in policy design is the Onge reservoir of social capital including customary law features. 15 References. Adapted from the source document.

Argues that expansion of intellectual property rights will reinforce class differences, undermine science and technology, reduce personal freedoms, and worsen negative aspects of capitalism; US, chiefly. Based on the author's book "Steal this idea: intellectual property and the corporate confiscation of creativity", Palgrave, 2001.

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

Intellectual property rights, including patents, structure innovation and allocate the benefits and costs of innovation. The article describes four deficiencies in understanding these rights regarding biotechnology patents. The authors contend that: 1) different disciplines possess assumptions about the working of patents that are based neither in fact nor in theory, 2) the fragmented approach to analyzing intellectual property rights leads to research results that can be misleading, and 3) the national and international property policy is often formed based on these incomplete or misleading research results. To address these deficiencies, the authors are currently developing a transdisciplinary approach to intellectual property rights, which uses a set of seven transdisciplinary and evaluative probes based on the results of research conducted to date, outlined here. The article also describes how this approach provides a more comprehensive analysis of patent systems to help academics and policy-makers examine the operation of patent systems in their social contexts.