iThink
Creation, innovation and regulation
CREATION, INNOVATION AND REGULATION: HOW CAN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS BE PHILOSOPHICALLY JUSTIFIED? BEN DE SOUSA (UPPER SIXTH) Art was described by Peter H. Karlen in his 1986 article Worldmaking: Property Rights in Aesthetic Creations as:
"the shaping of the exterior world to reflect man's inner nature" Peter H. Karlen This perceptive statement illustrates the relevance of the law of ‘intellectual property’, that protects the rights of creators to own their intellectual products, which, it could be argued (as by Hegel) are indeed reflections of their “inner nature”. In UK law, protection of these rights is achieved through the three main intellectual property protections of trademarks, patents and copyrights. On a legal level, the idea of intellectual property is well established, but it is worth considering its justifiability by assessing the philosophical arguments for and against it.
I will therefore begin by expanding on the title of this article. What, exactly, is ‘intellectual property’? Under customary international law, as laid down in Article 27(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is established that “everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary, or artistic production of which [they are] the author,” which constitutes a right to owning ‘intellectual property’ in vaguely the same way a pen or a car could be owned. This definition also describes the philosophical concept of intellectual property, which differs only in its focus on more abstract (moral and often deontological) reasoning than the legal concept, which is also grounded in practical and economic arguments.
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2022
