Intellectual Property Rights and the TRIPS Agreement An Overview of Ethical Problems and Some Proposed Solutions

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights negotiated in 1986 under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the institutional predecessor of the World Trade Organization, incorporated substantial and uniform protections of intellectual property rights into the international trade system. A large body of contemporary academic literature suggests that intellectual property rights on socially valuable goods such as essential medicines give rise to a number of ethical problems. This review paper seeks to give an overview of these problems. Moreover, it offers an outline and discussion This paper—a product of the Trade and Integration Team, Development Research Group; and the Development Dialogue on Values and Ethics, Human Development Network—is part of larger work programs on trade and intellectual property rights and on ethical issues in development policy. of a number of proposals as to how these problems might be alleviated. The paper is primarily descriptive in character. This means that although a personal perspective is sometimes offered, the primary ambition of the paper is not to argue for, and defend, a particular solution to the issues discussed. The aim is rather to highlight, explain and put into perspective a number of important arguments in the debate on the ethical nature of intellectual property rights so that policy-makers and other stakeholders are relatively well-equipped to make up their own mind on the issue.