Intellectual Property: The Promise and Risk of Human Rights

Abstract

The intersection of intellectual property and human rights is a relatively new site in the search for balance in intellectual property law and policy. Although this intersection opens up intellectual property to a unique kind of interdisciplinary analysis, only the human rights system appears to have seized the opportunity, while its intellectual property rights counterpart remains reluctant to engage. There are, so far, different competing first impressions over the nature of the intersection between intellectual property and human rights. Despite empirical credence of the conflict narrative, the co-existence of complementary thesis of the intellectual property and human rights interface has greater prospects for a meaningful and balanced rapprochement between the two. This chapter argues for critical scrutiny of the human rights appeal of intellectual property rights in order to avoid its potential for being hijacked by stronger stakeholders at the expense of their weaker opponents for whom intellectual property rights have strong paradoxical ramifications.