It is often argued that the fact that intellectual objects—objects like ideas, inventions, concepts, and melodies—can be used by several people simultaneously makes intellectual property rights impossible or particularly difficult to morally justify. In this article, I assess the line of criticism of intellectual ownership in connection with a central category of intellectual property rights, economic rights to intellectual property. I maintain that it is unconvincing.

The moral acceptability of intellectual property rights is often assessed by comparing them to central instances of rights to material property. Critics of intellectual ownership claim to have found significant differences. One of the dissimilarities pertains to the extent of the control intellectual property rights bestow on their holders over the material property of others. The main idea of the criticism of intellectual ownership built around that dissimilarity is that, in light of the comparison with material property rights, the power (...) is excessive. In this article, I assess this objection to intellectual property rights in connection with patents and copyrights. I maintain that it is implausible. (shrink)

The scope and type of property rights recognized over the effectiveness of antibiotics have a direct effect on how those claiming ownership engage in the exploitation and stewardship of this scarce resource. We examine the different property claims and rights the four major interest groups are asserting on antibiotics: (i) the inventors, (ii) those demanding that the resource be treated like any other transferable commodity, (iii) those advocating usage restrictions based on good stewardship principles and (iv) those considering the resource (...) as common heritage of humankind. (shrink)

Intellectual property regimes necessarily create artificial scarcity leading to wastage, both by blocking follow-up research and hindering access to those who are only able to pay less then the actual retail price. After revising the traditional arguments to hinder access to people’s intellectual labour we will examine why we should be more open to allow free-riding of inventive efforts, especially in cases where innovators have not secured the widest access to the fruits of their research and failed to cooperate with (...) follow-up innovators. We will do so by questioning the voluntariness involved in consumption of objects of innovation, restating the positive social externalities that arise when wider access to the fruits of innovation is assured, and examining the eventual harms innovators face. (shrink)

This paper aims to address two seemingly independent issues in the field of moral and political philosophy, namely the problem of global justice with elements regarding research ethics. The first section of the paper will be concerned with a short overview of the problem at hand, highlighting the particular way in which research is carried out in the 21st century. While admitting that the matrix of moral issues linked to the current topic is more diverse, I will limit the scope (...) of my analysis to only two elements. First of all, in the second section of my paper I will try to identify an answer to the following question: are researchers from non-native English speaking countries who seek to publish in academic journals from abroad in a position of inequality in relation to their peers from Australia, Great Britain or USA? I will explore the moral relevance of this question at a global level by presenting Philippe Van Parijs’ conception of linguistic justice. My argument will rest upon the fact that the emergence of English as a lingua franca in research publishing has had more positive than negative externalities in relation to researchers from developing countries. The third and final part of my paper will be a critique of the current Intellectual Property system which, in my opinion, hinders the access of researchers from developing countries to new research available in journals indexed in international databases like Wiley-Blackwell, SAGE or JSTOR. (shrink)