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5 - Intellectual Property Rights and the Fundamental Right to the Commons in the Light of Catholic Social Teaching

from II - Religious Perspectives on Life Patents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2019

Thomas C. Berg
Affiliation:
University of St Thomas, Minnesota
Roman Cholij
Affiliation:
St Edmund's College, Cambridge
Simon Ravenscroft
Affiliation:
Magdalene College, Cambridge
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Summary

In the early 2000s the Holy See submitted papers to the WIPO and the WTO, on the subject of Intellectual Property (IP) rights, genetic resources, traditional knowledge, and access to medicines. This chapter develops some concepts that are mainly implicit in those papers. Catholic Social Teaching does not address directly the subject of IP rights, but contains all the elements for a moral judgment on the present system of IP rights. The chapter develops the discussion in three parts: first, some ideas about private property and the universal destination of goods, and the right to knowledge; second, proposing a vision of IP rights in the light of the aforesaid principles about property in Catholic Social Teaching; third, examining the issue of IP rights in relation to the rights of native peoples. The essay concludes by arguing that, to ensure that patents serve the universal destination of goods and the common good, a new legal theory should be developed in this area. This would reconsider, especially, rules relating to the public availability of the invention, the right price of the licenses, possible exceptions to the patent, means of technological transfer, and the creation of alternative means of industrial knowledge protection.

Type
Chapter
Information
Patents on Life
Religious, Moral, and Social Justice Aspects of Biotechnology and Intellectual Property
, pp. 85 - 99
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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