Intellectual Property and Human Development: Current Trends and Future Scenarios

by Tzen Wong (Editor), Graham Dutfield (Editor)

Overview

This book examines the social impact of intellectual property laws. It addresses issues and trends relating to health, food security, education, new technologies, preservation of bio-cultural heritage, and contemporary challenges in promoting the arts. It explores how intellectual property frameworks could be better calibrated to meet socioeconomic needs in countries at different stages of development, with local contexts and culture in mind. Scenarios for the future are discussed. A resource for policy-makers, stakeholders, non-profits, and students, this volume furthermore highlights alternative modes of innovation that are emerging to address such diverse challenges as neglected or resurgent diseases in developing countries and the harnessing of creative possibilities on the Internet. The collected essays emphasize not only fair access by individuals and communities to intellectual property – protected material, whether a cure, a crop variety, clean technology, a textbook, or a tune – but also the enhancement of their own capabilities in cultural participation and innovation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521190930
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/21/2010
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Tzen Wong is a researcher and writer on topics including intellectual property, innovation and development. She has a background in law and social sciences (economics and sociology). After obtaining her master's degree in law from the University of Cambridge, UK, she has been active in the non-profit sector and is Managing Editor for the Intellectual Property and Human Development research project at PIIPA, which is funded by the Ford Foundation. She has also written for the European Intellectual Property Review and the Encyclopedia of International Development.

Graham Dutfield is Professor of International Governance at Leeds University School of Law. He is also a Senior Member of the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre at the Faculty of Law, Oxford University, and a Research Affiliate at the Intellectual Property Law and Technology Program at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto. He has a doctorate of philosophy in geography from Oxford University. He has authored several books, the latest being an expanded second edition of Intellectual Property Rights and the Life Science Industries, now subtitled Past, Present and Future.

Table of Contents

1. Intellectual property through the lens of human development: an introduction Tzen Wong; 2. Intellectual property and medicine: towards global health equity Claudia Chamas, Joshua Sarnoff and Ben Prickril; 3. Food security and intellectual property rights: finding the linkages Hans Morten Haugen, Manuel Ruiz and Savita Mullapudi Narasimhan; 4. Trends and scenarios in the legal protection of traditional knowledge Charles McManis and Yolanda Terán; 5. Traditional cultural expressions: preservation and innovation Tzen Wong and Claudia Fernandini; 6. Copyright and capability for education: an approach to intellectual property 'from below' Margaret Chon; 7. Knowledge and education: pro-access implications of new technologies Dalindyebo Shabalala; 8. Cultural diversity and the arts: contemporary challenges for copyright Tzen Wong, Molly Torsen and Claudia Fernandini; 9. Scenario planning on the future of IP: literature review and implications for human development Michael Gollin, Gwen Hinze and Tzen Wong.

Editorial Reviews

"Intellectual Property and Human Development is the result of years of multidisciplinary research bringing together new and contrasting perspectives in the continuing and stimulating debate on the role and place of IP in development. For those involved in this debate, this Book makes a distinguished contribution by stressing that there are no single answers to most of these questions and that a one single policy approach is inappropriate and impossible. In a time where IP issues are recurrent policy questions at the domestic and international level it is refreshing to read a book presenting a full gamut of interrelated development topics, stressing the need for more balanced and calibrated IP regimes."

- Pedro Roffe
Senior Fellow ICTSD, Project on Intellectual Property and Sustainable Development



"Where the dominant economic approach to intellectual property law concentrates nearly exclusively on promoting the production of more things, the contributors to this book take a broader, human development approach and ask how intellectual property laws today thwart the realization of basic human capabilities, from the right to health and education to the ability to enjoy cultural life with others. The theoretical framework applied here seeks both to broaden our understanding of the connections between intellectual property and development, and to harness this law to promote, not hinder, human freedom. This book is required reading for all who care about intellectual property and global justice in the 21st century."

- Madhavi Sunder
Professor of Law, University of California, Davis



"This book takes up many of the critical issues concerning the future of intellectual property (IP) regimes in a globalized economy. By bringing a human development perspective to the analyses of the costs and benefits of IP, this collection underscores not only the importance of a multidisciplinary approach in this area, but also the need to think innovatively about “communal” forms of innovation. This effort by the Public Interest Intellectual Property Advisors (PIIPA) will become an important point of reference for all those interested in analyzing how IP can become an effective tool for human development."

- Carlos A. Primo Braga
Director, Economic Policy and Debt, The World Bank



"This is the single best book so far on the rich interplay between intellectual property and human development. It should be a must-read for anyone wishing to be meaningfully engaged in the increasingly relevant debate on IP and development."

- Anatole Krattiger
Adjunct Professor, Cornell University and the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University

From the Publisher