Adcock, Mike and Beyleveld, Deryck (2016) 'Morality in intellectual property law : a concept-theoretic framework.', Intellectual property rights : open access., 4 (1). p. 154.
Abstract
This paper presents a ‘concept-theoretic’ position on the relationship between law and morality in any legal system that includes respect for human rights as a fundamental principle of the legal validity of its rules. With European Union law (EU law) as its central focus, this concept-theoretic position is premised upon the adoption by the EU of fundamental principles, which include human rights. Therefore, given the current status of human rights within the EU, the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), and, indeed, any EU law hence any EU Intellectual Property law (IP law)must be consistent with what follows logically and conceptually from the concept of a human right given by the UDHR. The paper will first present the concepttheoretic framework with reference to EU patent law arguing that some requirements need to be read into EU patent law even when not expressly stated. Furthermore, with reference to Article 6 of Directive 1998/44/EC we argue that this provision must be interpreted broadly to give full effect to human rights and human dignity. The second part of the paper looks at the CJEU ruling in Brüstle v Greenpeace (Case C-34/10 2011) as viewed from the concept-theoretic position. We argue that the CJEU reasoning is substantially sound on the requirements of the Directive and the CJEU had no option but to make the rulings it did. The third part of the paper looks at several objections raised by scientist and lawyers regarding the CJEU decision in Brüstle from the concept-theoretic position. We conclude that the CJEU has not misinterpreted the law. Finally, we conclude that the law governing the grant of patents must be read in line with the concept of human rights and human dignity.
Item Type: | Article |
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Full text: | (VoR) Version of Record Available under License - Creative Commons Attribution. Download PDF (418Kb) |
Status: | Peer-reviewed |
Publisher Web site: | https://doi.org/10.4172/2375-4516.1000154 |
Publisher statement: | Copyright: © 2016 Adcock M, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Date accepted: | 22 June 2016 |
Date deposited: | 25 October 2017 |
Date of first online publication: | 30 June 2016 |
Date first made open access: | 25 October 2017 |
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