Intellectual property rights and food security: the role of external relations

Abstract

Intellectual property rights (IPR’s) have become an important tool in ensuring food security; however, if used inappropriately, it could well create the reverse. This paper looks at the concept of IPR’s in order to find a way to harness their use so as food security is ensured. A tentative argument proposed here is that IPR’s do not exist in a metaphysical or epistemological vacuum; on the contrary, research and development leading up to patentable products is often related to social, economic or political contexts in such a way that the relation is constitutive. Thus, it is appropriate that claims to IPR’s should acknowledge these relations through a scheme of benefit sharing that is fair to all parties. In the course of the paper I will discuss the four major theories of IPR’s according to Fisher – the consequentialist theory, the Lockean theory, the Kantian/Hegelian theory, and the democratic order theory. The aim is to criticize each of them very briefly in terms of the constitutive external relations. If it is the case that IPR’s are even partly constituted by relations to outside contexts, then elements of these contexts should have a share in the benefits that accrue through the use of IPR’s also.