Towards a More Human, Equitable and Inclusive IP World Order?

Journal article

1 online resource (page 1109–1110)

Have we inadvertently built an intellectual property (IP) world order where IP is the optimal enabling tool for converting human knowledge into property; and by doing so, have we deliberately built an order which enables IP owners to extract and valorize humanity’s knowledge to its own detriment? Let us employ a synoptic approach in order to interrogate these questions. The historical motivations underpinning the current nature of ‘intellectual property’ is not straightforward, as IP norms originated within different timelines, economies and societies. Early printing and trade privileges reflected a range of motivations to satisfy individual, societal, communitarian, State and market needs. Take for example 17th century England: patents were rejected as undermining the principle of ensuring protected labour for the welfare of the state; the first modern statute in the world on patents – the 1624 Statute of Monopolies – juxtaposed rights against the competing public interests of state welfare and regulated competition; and equity courts assumed notions of dignity to be inherent in certain types of knowledge-producing activities. The Venetian printing privileges were underpinned with the Christian ethos of encouragement of learning and dissemination; while 16th century Vatican and bishopric printing privileges displayed a diversity of justifications: protecting investments (in the labour and expense in producing work), incentivization and reward (to enhance the likelihood of the creation of future beneficial works), fair competition (forbidding unjust enrichment of another’s fruits), and proto-trademark rights to use the Papal or Bishopric coat of arms as designating the origin of the book, and ensuring the dissemination of accurate religious knowledge. These Western-derived rules are not the only exemplars of early IP norms. Scholarship has revealed prototype-IP rules: in 4 BCE Mesopotamia in relation to commodity marks and terroir; during the Han (206 BC–220 CE) and Ming (1368–1644) dynasties in China in relation to early trademark and copyright regulations; and in the golden age of Islam in relation to property, custodianship, and reward for intellectual labour. Many of these societies treated the moral interests of knowledge-creators, the economic concerns of investors, and the wider societal benefits as complementary values, to be balanced between duties and entitlements.

Crossref

GRUR International ; 73, 12, 2024, 2632-8550.

[Oxford, England] : Oxford University Press (OUP), 2024.

English

https://academic.oup.com/grurint/article/72/3/231/6998505

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