Gordon, Wendy J. --- "Current patent laws cannot claim the backing of human rights" [2010] ELECD 336; 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 9

Section Title: Current patent laws cannot claim the backing of human rights

Author(s): Gordon, Wendy J.

Number of pages: 18

Extract:

9. Current patent laws cannot claim the
backing of human rights
Wendy J. Gordon1

1. INTRODUCTION
Many of the world's countries (one exception being the United States) has
undertaken a commitment at the level of human rights to protect the inter-
ests of persons who author `scientific . . . production[s]'.2 This commit-



1 This article is © 2010 by Wendy J. Gordon. Wendy Gordon is the Philip S.
Beck Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law in the US. Very significant
help toward this article was contributed by Keren Ben Shahar, BU LLM 2007.
The initial draft of this chapter, then titled `Patent and Human Rights: The Case of
the Second to Invent', was prepared for the conference on The Human Rights Paradox
in Intellectual Property Law organized by the Centre for Intellectual Property Law
(CIER) at Utrecht University. Professor Gordon presented a revised draft at `Tackling
Global Health Issues Through Law & Policy', the Annual Symposium of The American
Journal of Law and Medicine (Boston University, 2 February 2008.) She appreciates
the feedback of the participants at both conferences.
She also thanks Giuseppina D'Agostino, Brook Baker, Willem Grosheide, Mike
Meurer, Kevin Outterson, Giovanni Ramello, Rob Sloane and David Sugarman for
their helpful comments, and Naomi Baumol and Sarah Kaskel for their excellent
research assistance. For general discussion, she thanks Geertrui Van Overwalle,
Christopher Ricks, and Bruce Sunstein.
2 Such a right is recognized in a number of international and regional human
rights instruments. The most prominent document ...