Käll, Jannice --- "Patent policy and the right to science and culture – Report 2015 (A/70/279)" [2017] ELECD 1435; in Belder, Lucky; Porsdam, Helle (eds), "Negotiating Cultural Rights" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 199

Book Title: Negotiating Cultural Rights

Editor(s): Belder, Lucky; Porsdam, Helle

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781786435415

Section: Chapter 11

Section Title: Patent policy and the right to science and culture – Report 2015 (A/70/279)

Author(s): Käll, Jannice

Number of pages: 20

Abstract/Description:

The debates about the effects of intellectual property on human culture and science under the current forms of capitalism have been discussed for a long while. Not least, such debates have been pursued through social movements that may be categorized under the umbrella term, Access to Knowledge. The report on patent policy and cultural rights presented by the Special Rapporteur, Farida Shaheed should, in a similar manner to these movements be understood as raising crucial aspects of the intellectual property rights construct (for example, para. 2). As she notes, the tension between intellectual property rights and human rights is common to all fields of essential technologies, beyond the areas of health, food or the environment (para. 3). The report on the relation between patent rights and human rights to science and culture is the second of two consecutive studies by the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights and the right to science and culture. The first report (A/HRC/28/57 and Add.1 and 2) focused on how copyright policy interfaces, on the one hand, with the protection of authors’ moral and material interests and, on the other, with the right of everyone to benefit from scientific and cultural creativity. As the two reports are very much connected, the comment on copyright policy by Fiona Macmillanmay fruitfully be read in connection with this comment on the patent construct.