Regulating Access and Protecting Traditional Health Knowledge through Intellectual Property Rights? Issues from a Holistic Health Systems Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 504-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ritu Priya ◽  
Chris M. Kurian
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Pharmaceutical Industry ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Health Knowledge ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
Holistic Health ◽  
World Intellectual Property Organization ◽  
Traditional Health

Traditional Health Knowledge (THK) has been a resource for modern pharmacology and the pharma-ceutical industry since its inception. Until the 2000s, there was little obligation to acknowledge the use of THK by the pharmaceutical industry. Now, with the intellectual property regime becoming a prominent mode of regulating use of pharmaceutical inventions and innovations, and attempts by the pharmaceutical industry to patent products based on THK, rights of THK holders are being fore-grounded. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is seeking to protect the rights of THK holders through international legal instruments under the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) framework. This article discusses dilemmas arising from this attempt at bringing together two diverse knowledge frameworks. It draws upon existing literature on the nature of THK and upon the debates of the WIPO’s Inter-Governmental Committee on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expression (WIPO-IGC), and analyses them from the standpoint of a holistic health systems approach (HHSA) in an era of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The approach leads to the conclusion that deliberations and promulgations of the WIPO-IGC will have long-lasting implications for the survival of diversity and context-specificity in healthcare. Therein lies the significance of thinking through the policy and legal measures to be adopted nationally and internationally.

A Structurationist Analysis of Differing Policies Oriented to the Pharmaceutical Industry

2014 ◽  
pp. 291-312
Author(s):  
Yaşar Serhat Yaşgül
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Pharmaceutical Industry ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Active Participation ◽  
Governance Processes

This chapter has two purposes closely related to each other. The first one is to analyze why countries that have similar characteristics and benefits to each other develop different strategies in terms of rules that regulate the intellectual property rights in the pharmaceutical industry. The second one is to analyze the factors that determine active participation in global governance processes with regards to the intellectual property rights of countries that are developing, specifically in the pharmaceutical industry. The study used the structurationist approach developed by John M. Hobson, and findings were tested by comparing the examples of two countries: Turkey and Brazil.

A Structurationist Analysis of Differing Policies Oriented to the Pharmaceutical Industry

2016 ◽  
pp. 1001-1022
Author(s):  
Yaşar Serhat Yaşgül
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Pharmaceutical Industry ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Active Participation ◽  
Governance Processes

This chapter has two purposes closely related to each other. The first one is to analyze why countries that have similar characteristics and benefits to each other develop different strategies in terms of rules that regulate the intellectual property rights in the pharmaceutical industry. The second one is to analyze the factors that determine active participation in global governance processes with regards to the intellectual property rights of countries that are developing, specifically in the pharmaceutical industry. The study used the structurationist approach developed by John M. Hobson, and findings were tested by comparing the examples of two countries: Turkey and Brazil.

Rhetorics of Power and Development: Intellectual Property Rights and The Pharmaceutical Industry in Brazil

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 585-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariane McCabe
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Pharmaceutical Industry ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Regulatory Framework ◽  
Property Law ◽  
Industrial Property ◽  
Rights Discourse

AbstractThis paper examines the rise of an intellectual property (IP) rights discourse and highlights how it has been translated into national IP regimes. Recently, IP has become a polarizing concept, and attention has focused on questions that are overly narrow in scope. The characterization of the issue in simplistic dichotomous terms has ignored complex realities of developing countries. The case of Brazil is to highlights the complex ways in which the local pharmaceutical industry has been shaped by and has responded to the regulatory framework that has been established since and including the passage of the 1996 Industrial Property Law.

scholarly journals Intellectual Property, Traditional Resources Rights, and Natural Law: A Clash of Cultures

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 182-188
Author(s):  
John N Gathegi
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
World Intellectual Property Organization ◽  
International Treaties ◽  
The World ◽  
African Context ◽  
Clash Of Cultures

Western nations, through international treaties and bodies such as the World Trade Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and economic and political pressures on many governments, are to a large degree succeeding in strengthening protection of intellectual property rights as they are understood mainly within the western context. Framing the debate within Locke‘s theory of natural law, the paper discusses the extent to which this strengthening of intellectual property rights is appropriate for developing countries, especially within the African context.

When Property Does Not Mean Property: An Analysis of the Existence of International Intellectual Property†

2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 328-345
Author(s):  
Jonathan M.W.W. Chu
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Trade Mark ◽  
International Agreements ◽  
World Intellectual Property Organization ◽  
Logical Conclusion ◽  
International Obligations ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractThis paper endeavours to dispel the logical conclusion which one may draw from the territorial nature of intellectual property rights and aims to show that the term “international intellectual property” may refer to the underlying products of intellect which give rise to rights granted internationally and which are, themselves, rights of a different sort.To suggest that “there is no such thing as international intellectual property” may have been particularly reasonable prior to the end of the 19thcentury when there was little or no international obligations to protect intellectual property. Nowadays, however, the term “international intellectual property” is, at the very least, misunderstood, if not a clear term that has worked its way into the international legal lexicon with each international intellectual property agreement entered into since the beginning of the beginning of the international period.It is quite plain that individual intellectual property rights such as copyright, patents, registered designs, and registered and unregistered trade mark rights are not international in scope or nature. It is also quite clear that intellectual property rights are territorial in nature as they are derived from national law and are governed exclusively within jurisdictions of such law. This principle is trite and was better observed in a World Intellectual Property Organization survey:Each country determines, for its own territory and independently from any other country, what it is to be protected as intellectual property, who should benefit from such protection, for how long and how protection should be enforced.Despite an apparently logical conclusion which one may draw from the territorial nature of intellectual property rights, the term “international intellectual property” may infer something more than this. Rather than confining the term to basic interpretation of the words which make the term, international intellectual property may refer to the underlying products of intellect which give rise to rights granted internationally and which are, themselves, rights of a different sort. While the standards of recognition and rights granted in relation to such products of intellect may vary between nations, the source of such products remains the same and it is such property which various international agreements seek to govern. It is given through developments in international intellectual property agreements, that a definition of the term may be implied, if not derived.In this paper, I endeavour to establish that there is such thing as international intellectual property. As such, I will first establish that there is such a thing as „intellectual property,” despite arguments against the term. I will then move on to establish that there is such thing as international intellectual property, particularly in light of the developments in international intellectual property agreements.

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