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Dutfield, Graham --- "A Rights-Free World – Is it Workable, and What is the Point?" [2007] ELECD 163; in Waelde, Charlotte; MacQueen, Hector (eds), "Intellectual Property" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007)

Book Title: Intellectual Property

Editor(s): Waelde, Charlotte; MacQueen, Hector

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845428747

Section: Chapter 15

Section Title: A Rights-Free World – Is it Workable, and What is the Point?

Author(s): Dutfield, Graham

Number of pages: 15

Extract:

15. A rights-free world ­ is it workable,
and what is the point?
Graham Dutfield

1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 A Rights-free World ­ an Appealing Prospect ...

Imagine a world without intellectual property: one in which information's al-
leged wanting to be free would at last be realised, standing on the shoulders of
giants would be a right and not ­ at best ­ a wafer-thin experimental use exemp-
tion, and for those starved of science, culture and Coldplay's latest CD there
would be such a thing as a free lunch.
It certainly sounds appealing. Surely we could then distribute AIDS treat-
ments to the dying in Africa whether or not they have money to buy them. We
would be able to ensure schoolchildren and university students in poor countries
have access to the best and most up-to-date educational materials. Would not
an intellectual property rights-free world also save developing-country farmers
from having to buy expensive new seeds and pesticides? And, even if traditional
knowledge continued to be available without charge, why complain if everything
else is free?
Becoming intoxicated by this vision, would-be abolitionists would no doubt
scorn the objections of those claiming that without intellectual property rights
inventors would stop inventing, authors would stop writing, and musicians
would down instruments never to pick them up again. Did not Homo sapiens'
`creative explosion'1 predate the Statutes of Monopolies and Anne by 40 000
years, if not longer, and the birth of the Renaissance ...