The Moral Justifiability of Patents  

Oleh:

Sterckx, Sigrid

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Ethical Perspectives: Journal of the European Ethics Network vol. 13 no. 2 (Jun. 2006), page 249-265.
Topik: Patents; natural rights; distributive justice; consequentialism; innovation; knowledge

Ketersediaan

Perpustakaan Pusat (Semanggi) Nomor Panggil: EE45.10 Non-tandon: 1 (dapat dipinjam: 0) Tandon: tidak ada

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Three attempts are usually made to justify patents: natural rights, distributive justice, and consequentialist arguments, all of which I contest. The natural rights arguments is traced back to John Locke, defender of the 'labour theory of the property,' who essentially holds that person have a right to property insofar as they have mixed their labour with it, and insofar as they have appropriated natural things without exhausting them or taking more than their share. Yet, the investor's mixing of labour is often the last step of a longer historical process, and patents seem to encourage waste, since they restrict the use of an idea. The distributive justice arguments holds that patent rewardthe initiative of investors - without this reward, 'free riders' would be able to compete unfairly; the exclusivity granted by patents corrects this hole in the free market. However, our current system does not necessarily reflect this principle; it is difficult to clarify the criteria on which an investor deserves a reward; unsuccessful investors and basic researchers also invest much initiative, and yet are not rewarded; it is unclear that justice should reward someone by granting them the exclusive right to determine what is done with knowledge; and no link exists between the social usefulness of an invention and the scope of protection granted by a patent. The consequentialist justification holds that patents encourage innovation, and the disclosure of knowledge. Althought it is clear that patents encourage inventions, it is not clear that they encourage progress - they may even limit progress by restricting use of previous knowledge. As for the disclosure of knowledge; such knowledge is hard to keep secret in the first p;ace, and patent offices grant overly broad patents. In conclusion, this paper offers some suggestions concerning the true costs of the patent system.

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