Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2010
Editor(s)
Willem Grosheide
ISBN
978 1 84844 447 8
Publisher
Edward Elgar
Language
en-US
Abstract
In the dispute over the enforcement of pharmaceutical patents, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is sometimes cited as giving patent protection the status of a 'human right'. It is true that the ICESCR provides for ‘the right of everyone’ ‘[t]o benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author’. But that does not mean that patent protection is a human right. Patent fails as a human right for many reasons, one of which is the lack of fit between current patent law and and the Covenant. Current patent laws grant patents to people who are not ‘authors’ whom the human rights regime is designed to protect, and current patent laws refuse to recognize as patent holders many people who would indeed be authorial inventors.
Recommended Citation
Wendy J. Gordon,
Current Patent Laws Cannot Claim the Backing of Human Rights
,
in
Intellectual Property and Human Rights: A Paradox
155
(Willem Grosheide ed.,
2010).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/1922
