Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-dfsvx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T18:03:52.986Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Intellectual Property Rights, Moral Imagination, and Access to Life-Enhancing Drugs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Patricia H. Werhane  and
Michael Gorman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Although the idea of intellectual property (IP) rights—proprietary rights to what one invents, writes, paints, composes or creates—is firmly embedded in Western thinking, these rights are now being challenged across the globe in a number of areas. This paper will focus on one of these challenges: government-sanctioned copying of patented drugs without permission or license of the patent owner in the name of national security, in health emergencies, or life-threatening epidemics. After discussing standard rights-based and utilitarian arguments defending intellectual property we will present another model. IP is almost always a result of a long history of scientific or technological development and numbers of networks of creativity, not the act of a single person or a group of people at one moment in time. Thus thinking about and evaluating IP requires thinking about IP as shared rights. A network approach to IP challenges a traditional model of IP. It follows that the owner of those rights has some obligations to share that information or its outcomes. If that conclusion is applied to the distribution of antiretroviral drugs, what pharmaceutical companies are ethically required to do to increase access to these medicines in the developing world will have to be reanalyzed from a more systemic perspective.

Type
Special Issue
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , October 2005 , pp. 595 - 613
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbott Laboratories. 2003. “Tanzania Care.” www.tanzaniacare.org.Google Scholar
Abbott Laboratories. 2004. Touching Lives: 2003 Global Citizenship Report.Google Scholar
Altman, Lawrence K. 2003. “W.H.O. Aims to Treat 3 Million for AIDS.” New York Times (December 1), A6.Google Scholar
Attaran, Amir, and Gillespie-White, Lee. 2001. “Do Patents for Antiretroviral Drugs Constrain Access to Treatment in Africa?” Journal of the American Medical Association 286: 1886–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bale, Harvey E. Jr. 2002. “Patents and Public Health: A Good or Bad Mix?” Pfizer Forum, www.pfizerforum.com.Google Scholar
Bollier, David, Weiss, Stephanie, and Hanson, Kirk. 1991. “Merck &. Co, Inc.,” Harvard Business School Case 9-991-021.Google Scholar
Clemente, C. L. 2001. “Intellectual Property: The Patent on Prosperity.” Pfizer Forum, www.pfizerforum.com/english/clemente/shtml.Google Scholar
Curti, Andrea M. 2001. “The WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding: An Unlikely Weapon in the Fight Against HIV.” American Journal of Law and Medicine (December 22): 469–80.Google Scholar
Dugger, Celia W. 2003. “Rural Haitians Are Vanguard in Battle.” New York Times (November 30), A1.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1977. Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Felsenthal, Edward. 1993. “Patent Quagmire: Who Invented AZT? Big Bucks Are Riding On What Sleuths Find.” Wall Street Journal (October 21), 1.Google Scholar
Friedman, Michael A., Besten, Henk den, and Attaran, Amir. 2003. “Out-Licensing: A Practical Approach for Improvement of Access to Medicines in Poor Countries.” The Lancet 361: 341–44.Google Scholar
Gentner, Dedre, and Whitley, Eric W.. 1997. “Mental Models of Population Growth,” in Environment, Ethics, and Behavior, ed. Bazerman, Max, Messick, David, Tenbrunsel, Ann, and Wade-Benzoni, Kimberley A.. San Francisco: New Lexington Press.Google Scholar
Goering, Laurie. 2005. “Botswana’a Blanket HIV Care Can’t Cover All Fears,” Chicago Tribune (March 6), 1.Google Scholar
Goodman, Kenneth, 1993. “Intellectual Property and Control.”: Academic Medicine 68(9): 588–92.Google Scholar
Gorman, Michael. 1992. Simulating Science. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Hardin, Garrett. 1968. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162: 1243–45.Google Scholar
Heller, Michael A., and Eisenberg, Rebecca S.. 1998. “Can Patents Deter Innovation? The Anticommons in Biomedical Research.” Science 280: 698–701.Google Scholar
Hughes, James. W., Moore, Michael J., and Snyder, Edward A.. 2002. “‘Napsterizing’ Pharmaceuticals Access, Innovation, and Consumer Welfare.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 9229.Google Scholar
Idris, Kamil. 2003. Intellectual Property: A Tool for Economic Growth. Geneva: World Intellectual Property Organization.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Thomas. 1813. “Letter to Isaac McPherson,” reprinted in The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Kock, A. and Peden, W.. New York: Modern Library, 1972.Google Scholar
Locke, John. 1764, 1983. The Second Treatise of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Maxwell, Bryan. 2002. “Access to Life: The Conflict Between Public Health and Intellectual Property Protections on HIV/AIDS Drugs in Developing Countries.” Unpublished thesis, University of Virginia.Google Scholar
Merges, Robert. 1998. “The Control of Strategic Alliances: An Empirical Analysis of Biotechnology Collaborations,” Journal of Industrial Economics 46: 125–56.Google Scholar
Merges, Robert P., and Nelson, Richard. 1990. “On the Complex Economics of Patent Scope.” Columbia Law Review 90: 832–50.Google Scholar
Mitroff, Ian, and Linstone, Harold. 1993. The Unbounded Mind. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ordover, Janusz A. 1991. “A Patent System for both Diffusion and Exclusion.” Journal of Economics Perspectives 5: 43–60.Google Scholar
O’Reilly, Kevin. 2003. World Health Organization (WHO) UNAID data. http://www.who/.Google Scholar
Rand, Ayn. 1966. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. New York: New American Library.Google Scholar
Resnik, D. B. 2003. “A Pluralistic Account of Intellectual Property.” Journal of Business Ethics 46: 319–35.Google Scholar
Senge, Peter. 1990. The Fifth Discipline. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Shue, Henry. 1996. Basic Rights, second edition. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Thurow, Lester C. 1997. “Needed: A New System of Intellectual Property Rights.” Harvard Business Review 75 (September–October): 95–103.Google Scholar
Tuck, Richard. 1979. Natural Rights Theories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Vaver, David. 2000. “Intellectual Property: State of the Art.” Law Quarterly Review 116: 621–37.Google Scholar
Weber, James, Austin, James, and Barrett, Diana. 2001. “Merck Global Health Initiatives (B): Botswana.” Harvard Business School Case 9-301-089.Google Scholar
Werhane, Patricia H. 1999. Moral Imagination and Management Decision-Making. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
World Bank. 1999. www.worldbank.org.Google Scholar
World Intellectual Property Organization. 2003. “Intellectual Property: A Lever for Economic Growth,” WIPO Magazine (September/October): 2–8.Google Scholar
Yemen, Gerry, and Powell, Elizabeth. 2003. “The Female Health Company (A) and (B).” Charlottesville: University of Virginia, Darden Business Publishing, UVA-BC-0146-7.Google Scholar