Intellectual Property Rights and Human Rights: Interconnected?

This article explores the interconnectedness between intellectual property rights and human rights. It discusses the impact of intellectual property rights on the enjoyment of human rights and the challenges faced in the field of medical patents. The article concludes that intellectual property rights and human rights are connected and cannot be applied without affecting each other.

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Intellectual Property Rights and Human Rights: Interconnected?
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2/15/2019

Introduction
Intellectual Property and Human Rights are the two bodies of law have become very commonly
used terms. In general Intellectual property rights means assigning general rights like copyrights,
patents and trademarks. By assigning these rights the creator or the innovator of a particular right
gets a monopoly over the product or service and disallows its duplicity or copy. In reality the
intellectual property system affects the enjoyment of different human rights (Lerner, 2010).
Intellectual Property right can be defined as a right that can be protected under the state or
Federal Law, including discoveries, copyrightable works, inventions, ideas and works.
Intellectual property is intangible in nature such as trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights and
patents (Lee & Ashgate., 2015). Although there is no direct relationship between intellectual
property and human rights as both of them evolved separately but there interconnections have
become very popular since last decade due to the following reasons: after the TRIPS Agreement
the impacts that intellectual property rights has on the human rights have become very visible
(Nosek, Borsboom, & Buck, 2015). Secondly, there are various challenges that are being faced
that concern the contributions of knowledge and the same cannot be covered under the present
regime of intellectual property rights. The importance of intellectual property rights has
increased and hence there is a lot of confusion between intellectual property rights and human
rights in the field of medical patents (Carrol, 2015).
Now, it is questionable that if an intellectual property right is a human right. One reason for this
is that the Intellectual Property Rights are protected by the private law while the public law
protects the human rights (Carlos, 2014). There are various treaties that protect the human rights
like WIPO Copyright Treaty, BC and PC. According to Section three of the general introduction
of professor Grosheide there is a legal literature between intellectual property and human rights
(Seyoum, 2014).
There is intersection of the human rights and the intellectual property rights due to TRIPS
agreement as well that was adopted in the year 1994 by the World Trade Organization. The
TRIPS agreement laid minimum standards for the protection of the Intellectual property.
According to Article 15(1) c there is imbalance between the intellectual property rights and the

human rights and intellectual property right is broader in scope (Shyllon, 2015).So altogether it
cannot say that intellectual property rights do not cover the human rights.
Conclusion
According to the above discussion it can be concluded that the Intellectual property right and the
human rights are related to each other and are connected. The intellectual property rights have
immediate impact on the realization of human rights. Hence, it can be concluded that the
intellectual property rights and the human rights are connected to each other by one way or the
other therefore; they cannot be applied without affecting each other (Ikka, 2015). Though,
intellectual property right is broader in terms still it covers the human rights or the rights towards
the society in which we operate therefore the human rights shall not be overlooked.

References
Carlos, C. (2014). Bilateral Investment Agreements: Agents of New Global Standards for the Protection of
Intellectual Property Rights? Journal of Intellectual property , 5 (2), 20.
Carrol, M. (2015). Sharing Research Data and Intellectual Property Law: A Primer. Journal of Intellectual Property
, 13 (8), 10-17.
Ikka, R. (2015). Questia.com. Retrieved February 15, 2019, from Questia.com:
https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-69045559/correlates-of-intellectual-property-violation
Lee, Y., & Ashgate. (2015). The relationship between patents, human rights and access to medicine. Journal of
Intellectual Property Law and Practice , 11 (2), 287.
Lerner, J. (2010). The Empirical Impact of Intellectual Property Rights on Innovation: Puzzles and Clues.
AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW , 99 (2), 343-48.
Nosek, B., Borsboom, B., & Buck, B. (2015). Promoting an open research culture. Managmeent Journal , 348
(6242), 1422-1425.
Seyoum, B. (2014). The impact of intellectual property rights on foreign direct investment. The Columbia Journal
of World Business , 31 (1), 50-59.
Shyllon, F. (2015). Cultural Heritage and Intellectual Property. Journal of Intellectual Property , 10 (2), 10-15.