Ethical Issues Surrounding Intellectual Property Rights

Philosophy Compass 5 (12):1107-1115 (2010)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Much of today’s international trade is conducted according to trade agreements that involve substantial and uniform protections of intellectual property rights. Intellectual property rights are a socio‐economic tool that create a temporary monopoly for inventor firms and enable such firms to charge prices for their innovations that are many times higher than the marginal cost of production of the innovations. This allows the inventor firms to salvage their research‐costs and secure a profit on their innovations. A large body of contemporary philosophical and interdisciplinary literature suggests that intellectual property rights give rise to a number of ethical problems. This review paper seeks to give an overview of what these problems are. It also offers an outline of proposals as to how these problems might be alleviated, and it briefly explains the two classical defenses of the ethical permissibility of intellectual property rights. The ethical issues surrounding intellectual property rights are most pertinent when it is socially valuable goods that are given intellectual property protection. The discussions in this paper revolve around just one product type in order to bring out the broader ethical issues surrounding intellectual property rights. In line with much contemporary literature on the ethical dimensions of intellectual property rights, the product type in question is life‐saving medicines

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 98,418

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Labor as the Basis for Intellectual Property Rights.Bryan Cwik - 2014 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 17 (4):681-695.
Essential Goods for AIDS Widows.Barbara Hilkert Andolsen - 2008 - Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 28 (1):67-86.
Intellectual Property.Seana Valentine Shiffrin - 1996 - In Robert E. Goodin, Philip Pettit & Thomas Winfried Menko Pogge (eds.), A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 653–668.

Analytics

Added to PP
2011-01-10

Downloads
140 (#141,939)

6 months
8 (#461,911)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Jørn Sønderholm
Aalborg University

References found in this work

Anarchy, State, and Utopia.Robert Nozick - 1974 - New York: Basic Books.
Two treatises of government.John Locke - 1953 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Peter Laslett.
Two Treatises of Government.Roland Hall - 1966 - Philosophical Quarterly 16 (65):365.
Human rights and global health: A research program.Thomas W. Pogge - 2005 - Metaphilosophy 36 (1‐2):182-209.
Priceless Goods.Ian Maitland - 2002 - Business Ethics Quarterly 12 (4):451-480.

View all 15 references / Add more references