Cooper Dreyfuss, Rochelle --- "Patents and human rights: where is the paradox?" [2010] ELECD 331; in Grosheide, Willem (ed), "Intellectual Property and Human Rights" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Intellectual Property and Human Rights

Editor(s): Grosheide, Willem

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848444478

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: Patents and human rights: where is the paradox?

Author(s): Cooper Dreyfuss, Rochelle

Number of pages: 25

Extract:

4. Patents and human rights: where is the
paradox?
Rochelle Cooper Dreyfuss*
There is an emerging trend, particularly in international and European circles,
to bemoan what is termed the human rights paradox in intellectual property.
Thus, it is claimed that intellectual property rights are grounded in fundamen-
tal concepts of human dignity and just deserts, in a commitment to accord to
creators the benefits of their intellectual efforts. At the same time, however, it
is recognized that intellectual property rights protect information, a non-
rivalrous good. The paradox is said to arise when one human right is pitted
against another, when intellectual property rights are used to restrict access to
information that could ­ at no real cost to the developer ­ be deployed in ways
that satisfy fundamental human needs.1
In a sense, it is not difficult to understand why this concern has emerged.
At the international level, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(UDHR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural


* Pauline Newman Professor of Law and Director of the Engelberg Center on
Innovation Law and Policy. This chapter was prepared as a paper for a conference on
`The Human Rights Paradox in Intellectual Property Law' organized by the Centre for
Intellectual Property Law (CIER), Molengraaff Institute for Private Law, at Utrecht
University. I am grateful to Willem Grosheide and the other Conference organizers and
to the Conference participants, who convinced me there was a problem here worth
thinking about. I am especially indebted to Geertrui Van ...