Intellectual Property and Theories of Justice

In this volume, fourteen philosophers, economists and legal scholars and one computer scientist address various facets of the same question: under which conditions (if any) can intellectual property rights be fair? This general question unfolds in a variety of others: What are the parallels and differences between intellectual and real property? Are libertarian theories especially sympathetic to IP rights? Should Rawlsian support copyright? How can a concern for incentives be taken into account by each of the main theories of justice? What's exactly wrong with free-riding, when dealing with non-rival goods? This requires a close examination of a variety of specific issues such as peer-to-peer file sharing, access to vital medicines, the interaction between copyright and freedom of expression, patents on genes, etc. It also involves bringing together state-of-the-art knowledge on legal, economic and technical issues with the most advanced state of our normative theories.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors How (Un)fair is Intellectual Property?; A.Gosseries Lockean Justifications of Intellectual Property; D.Attas Are Rawlsians Entitled to Monopoly Rights?; S.Dumitru Access to vs. Exclusion from Knowledge: Intellectual Property, Efficiency and Social Justice; G.B.Ramello The Incentives Argument for Intellectual Property Protection; S.V.Shiffrin When Property is Something Else: Understanding Intellectual Property Through the Lens of Regulatory Justice; S.Ghosh Liberty and the Rejection of Strong Intellectual Property Rights; J.Trerise Is P2P Sharing of MP3 Files an Objectionable Form of Free-riding?; G.Demuijnck Copyright and Freedom of Expression: A Philosophical Map; A.Couto Free Software, Proprietary Software and Linguistic Justice; G.Falquet& F.Grin How Efficient is the Patent System? A General Appraisal and an Application to the Pharmaceutical Sector; P.Belleflamme Patents on Drugs -- The Wrong Prescription?; P.Dietsch Is It Ethical To Patent Human Genes?; A.Lever Index

About the Author :
AXEL GOSSERIES is a Permanent Research Fellow at the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research, based at the Chaire Hoover in economic and social ethics, University of Louvain, Belgium. His work in moral and political philosophy focuses more specifically on theories of intergenerational justice, tradable quotas schemes and the idea of workplace democracy. He is the author of Penser la justice entre les generations (2004). ALAIN MARCIANO is an Associate Professor at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France. He is the author of La philosophie economique and Aethiques de l'economie and a co-editor of the Elgar Companion to Economics and Philosophy and one of the main editors of the Review of Economic Philosophy. ALAIN STROWEL is a Professor at Saint-Louis University (FUSL, Brussels), the University of Liege and the Catholic University of Brussels-Leuven, Belgium, where he teaches copyright, design and media law. He is the author of Droit d'auteur et copyright (1993) and Droit d'auteur et numerique: logiciels, bases de donnees, multimedia (2001).

Review :
'This book of readings on intellectual property is unusual in three respects: the international cast of the contributors, the widening of the focus of analysis to include not only law and economics but also philosophy, and the decision to examine both theoretical questions and concrete practical questions. Most important is the high quality of the contributions. They not only are of high intellectual quality, but they are lucid and well written; and the introduction is a model of clarity.' - Richard A. Posner, US Court of Appeal, Seventh Circuit 'Dramatically strengthened and globalized, intellectual property rules are shaping the evolution of whole sectors of the world economy: technology, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, publishing, and entertainment. The world's most powerful corporations and governments are therefore fighting intensely over the design of these rules. The present collection highlights the main moral issues raised by intellectual property rights. It discusses these issues at the level of principle, and also in a series of focused moral analyses of the most pressing innovation-access dilemmas and of various reform ideas. An excellent introduction to a complex, shifting, and very important moral terrain.' - Thomas Pogge, Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs Yale University