Intellectual Property Rights and Pharmaceuticals

Abstract

Despite the fact that we refer to property quite unproblematically in everyday parlance, the institution of property is complex, contested and highly political, and that of intellectual property is perhaps even more so. Property is not an object or a thing; rather, it is an entitlement, an artifice which has developed over time to help regulate and resolve contests over objects that people need or want (Drahos 1996). Because these objects are finite and human wants infinite, property rights aim, in principle, to resolve interpersonal conflict by allocating exclusive ownership to specified individuals or groups. Property rights, then, by virtue of determining who gets what and how, and excluding others altogether, are the quintessential contested political institution. Intellectual property rights (IPRs) are even more contested and political because not only do they determine how and where the borders between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ are set, but also because what is to be owned, that is, ideas, knowledge and other products of the human intellect, are not scarce and are intrinsically inappropriable. Indeed, knowledge is the classic text-book case of a public good, being both inappropriable and non-rivalrous in nature. Unlike tangible goods and objects, which can be appropriated individually and thus visibly separated from the commons, knowledge and intellectual products are intangible and not appropriable in this way; once created, knowledge can be used by anybody.