Seminar with Prof. Rochelle Dreyfuss (New York University, USA)
Prof Dreyfuss is the Pauline Newman Professor of Law Emerita at NYU School of Law. She is Co-Director of NYU’s Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy, Research Fellow at the Oxford IP Research Centre, and on the Executive Board of ATRIP.
She will give a talk on ‘Human rights, intellectual property law and distributive justice' on 30 October, at Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, followed by comments from Prof Emeritus Niklas Bruun (Hanken).
Venue & Time : Hanken Auditorium A303, 30 October, 15.00-16.30
Please sign up here to the event
Abstract: Theorists who study the tension between human rights and the international patent regime have long focused on the conflict between the rights of innovators to protect the pecuniary interests in their work and the right of the public to access the advances these innovators have made. This concern with distributive justice is understandable: modern technologies can save lives, protect the environment, and improve social welfare in myriad other ways. They should be widely shared. However, that concern is incomplete. In this piece, I argue that the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and like instruments also encompass contributive justice. That is, the right to “share in scientific advancement” must be understood to include the right to participate in science and to contribute to technological progress.
There are several drawbacks to concentrating on distributive justice. Access is then limited to things that innovators (mainly in developed countries) have created for their own purposes. The needs of other people may be ignored and even when satisfied, these needs are fulfilled only through the kindness of strangers. Moreover, demands for access can be understood as asking for something—the result of hard work and substantial investment—in exchange for nothing. As such, it provokes negative responses as well as international efforts to raise the standards of intellectual property protection and make access even harder to obtain. An emphasis on contributive justice would invigorate state efforts to enable their populations to innovate for their own needs. It would open policy space to expand the flexibilities that states require to become technologically self-reliant. Enabling greater participation in science would allow everyone to benefit from different ways of knowing and produce a more varied range of inventions.