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 socio-economic needs in countries at different stages of development, with local contexts and culture in mind. 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.

Table of Contents:
1. Intellectual property through the lens of human development: an introduction Tzen Wong; 2. Intellectual property and medicine: towards global health equity Claudia Chamas, Joshua Sarnoff and Ben Prickril; 3. Food security and intellectual property rights: finding the linkages Hans Morten Haugen, Manuel Ruiz and Savita Mullapudi Narasimhan; 4. Trends and scenarios in the legal protection of traditional knowledge Charles McManis and Yolanda Terán; 5. Traditional cultural expressions: preservation and innovation Tzen Wong and Claudia Fernandini; 6. Copyright and capability for education: an approach to intellectual property 'from below' Margaret Chon; 7. Knowledge and education: pro-access implications of new technologies Dalindyebo Shabalala; 8. Cultural diversity and the arts: contemporary challenges for copyright Tzen Wong, Molly Torsen and Claudia Fernandini; 9. Scenario planning on the future of IP: literature review and implications for human development Michael Gollin, Gwen Hinze and Tzen Wong.

About the Author :
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.

Review :
'The wide range of policy issues and disciplinary approaches discussed in this impressive volume offers a rich and varied narrative on the challenges that lie ahead in integrating the many imperatives and concerns of human development into intellectual property law and policy-making initiatives in the future.' Duncan Matthews, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities