Globalization of Intellectual Property Law and the Challenge of Development and Public Health

Intellectual property plays an increasingly vital role in global trade and economic development. Globalization of intellectual property rights means that intangible informational resources are now produced, exchanged and consumed anywhere and everywhere defying jurisdictional borders. Intellectual property has moved into the mainstream of national economic and developmental planning; in the recent past it has also emerged as a central element of multilateral trade relations. In the early twenty-first century, the concept of intellectual property is beginning to encounter insistently the concept of development. These recent interactions, occurring within the context of accelerating globalization, have renewed questions about the fundamental purpose of intellectual property. Moreover, the crisis over access to patented antiretroviral drugs has recently injected human rights and social justice debate into a field dominated by commercial instrumentalism and economic rationales and given intellectual property a reason to reconsider its welfare generating justification. This Article attempts to map the challenges raised by these encounters between intellectual property and development.