Intellectual Property Rights and Food Security: The Role of External Relations

摘要

Intellectual property rights (IPRs) have become an important tool in ensuring food security; however, if used inappropriately, it could well create the reverse. This paper looks at the concept of IPRs in order to find a way to harness their use so asfood security is ensured. A tentative argument proposed here is that IPRs do not exist in a metaphysical or epistemological vacuum; on the contrary, research and development leading up to patentable products is often related to social, economic, or political contexts in such a way that the relation is constitutive. Thus, it is appropriate that claims to IPRs should acknowledge these relations through a scheme of benefit sharing that is fair to all parties. In the course of the paper, I will discuss thefour major theories of IPRs according to Fisher—the con-sequentialist theory, the Lockean theory, the Kantian/Hegelian theory, and the democratic order theory. The aim is to criticize each of them very briefly in terms of the constitutive external relations. If it is the case that IPRs are even partly constituted by relations to outside contexts, then elements of these contexts should have a share in the benefits that accrue through the use of IPRs also.