Report: IP, Access To Science A Troubled Relationship

A new academic report looks into the relationship between intellectual property and access to science and culture, in the wake of work on the issue by former United Nations Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, Farida Shaheed. Contributors to the report aimed at reflecting on how the intellectual property system can foster economic growth while encouraging non-economic values and objectives of human development.

The report [pdf] titled, “Intellectual Property and Access to Science and Culture: Convergence or Conflict?,” includes comments from Shaheed, who authored two reports on the subject, in 2014 and 2015 (IPW, Access to Knowledge, 8 November 2015).

Co-published by the Center for International Intellectual Property Studies (CEIPI) at the University of Strasbourg law school, and the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), the report includes contributions to a roundtable organised in 2015 by CEIPI on the issue. Speakers at the roundtable addressed questions such as the interface between IP rights and the human right to science and culture.

The first part of the report is dedicated to the 2014 and 2015 Shaheed reports. “Adopting a human rights perspective on intellectual property issues is both crucial, and urgent, for such an approach focuses attention on a host of important themes that may get lost when copyrights and patents are treated primarily in terms of trade,” she said in her contribution to the CEIPI/ICTSD report.

According to a conclusion by Christophe Geiger, CEIPI director general and director of the research department, the protection and access aspects of copyright are closely linked. However, some of the current “overprotective tendencies call for an emphasis on cultural participation and on the inclusive function of copyright law in order to re-establish a fair balance of interests within the system.”

“It is very important that copyright is understood as a cultural right rather than a right to forbid or sanction, and the poor image that intellectual property sometimes has in public opinion is a clear indicator of this,” he said.