Human Rights and Intellectual Property: Conflict or Co-Existence?

Abstract

Human rights bodies within the United Nations have given unprecedented attention to intellectual property issues over the past four years, addressing important and contested issues such as patented medicines, digital copyrights, transfers of technology, and the effect of intellectual property rights on economic development. This emerging human rights approach to intellectual property is often critical of existing standards of protection and it seeks to address legal and policy issues that intellectual property treaty makers and legislators often ignore. This article analyses two competing frameworks that States, NGOs, and inter-governmental organisations are using to conceptualise the increasingly contested intersection of human rights law and intellectual property law. It traces the evolution of these two approaches and explores their consequences for the international legal system.

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