Intellectual Rights And Human Rights: Interconnected?

Running head: INTELLECTUAL RIGHTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS: INTERCONNECTED?
Intellectual Rights And Human Rights: Interconnected?
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1INTELLECTUAL RIGHTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS: INTERCONNECTED?
Although there is no direct relationship between intellectual property and human
rights as both of them evolved separately, their interconnections, however, have become very
popular yet debatable since the last decade. As said by Cornish, Llewelyn & Aplin (2003), by
assigning Intellectual property rights (IPR), the creator or the innovator of a particular right
gets a monopoly over the product or service and disallows its duplicity or copy.. While,
Human Rights are the basic and primary rights that are essential for living dignifiedly in the
society and not just sustaining like mere animals. This paper strives to explain the benefit of
IPR while at the same time how it affects human rights.
With the growing importance of IPR over the years, there seems to be a lot of
turmoil between IPR and human rights in the field of medical patents (Murray & Stern,
2007). Intellectual property rights is essential for the pharmaceutical industry as different
factors like setting new business strategies, expanding the size of the company, promoting the
products, to improve the existing drug quality, and also to develop new drugs so that their
progress is secured from being tampered by the rival companies. It is also important for
negotiating a fair contract with its clients. Apart from these reasons, the primary importance
of intellectual property in respect to pharmaceutical industry is that the regulatory body of the
intellectual property does not allow any random company to manufacture medicines, both for
maintaining the quality and the pricing of the items; so that everyone could afford them.
However, it needs to be understood that IPR is not absolutely beneficial as it does
affect Human Rights at certain conditions. As commented by Helfer (2003), the intellectual
property system affects the enjoyment of different human rights; as for example copyright or
trademark granted to a company that is not functioning ethically or not meeting the regulatory
standard would manufacture malicious products that might be even fatal for the common
people. At many times, it has been evidenced that the pharmaceutical giants have patented
over certain life saving drug that is indispensible for saving the life of patients of certain