Intellectual Property and Human Development: Current Trends and Future Scenarios

This book examines the social impact of intellectual property laws. It addresses issues and trends relating to health, food security, education, new technologies, preservation of bio-cultural heritage, and contemporary challenges in promoting the arts. It explores how intellectual property frameworks could be better calibrated to meet socioeconomic needs in countries at different stages of development, with local contexts and culture in mind. Scenarios for the future are discussed. A resource for policy-makers, stakeholders, non-profits, and students, this volume furthermore highlights alternative modes of innovation that are emerging to address such diverse challenges as neglected or resurgent diseases in developing countries and the harnessing of creative possibilities on the Internet. The collected essays emphasize not only fair access by individuals and communities to intellectual property – protected material, whether a cure, a crop variety, clean technology, a textbook, or a tune – but also the enhancement of their own capabilities in cultural participation and innovation.

Tzen Wong is a researcher and writer on topics including intellectual property, innovation and development. She has a background in law and social sciences (economics and sociology). After obtaining her master's degree in law from the University of Cambridge, UK, she has been active in the non-profit sector and is Managing Editor for the Intellectual Property and Human Development research project at PIIPA, which is funded by the Ford Foundation. She has also written for the European Intellectual Property Review and the Encyclopedia of International Development.

Graham Dutfield is Professor of International Governance at Leeds University School of Law. He is also a Senior Member of the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre at the Faculty of Law, Oxford University, and a Research Affiliate at the Intellectual Property Law and Technology Program at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto. He has a doctorate of philosophy in geography from Oxford University. He has authored several books, the latest being an expanded second edition of Intellectual Property Rights and the Life Science Industries, now subtitled Past, Present and Future.