Intellectual Property Rights: Excluding other rights of other people
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31/07/2009
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Economic and Political Weekly
This article interrogates the claims of intellectual property to be a right. Drawing on the political theory of rights, it argues that information, ideas and knowledge fail to meet the basic test of rights and intellectual property right prevents those who do not own it from accessing and exercising their own diverse rights. Thus, it violates the very idea of individual autonomy on which it bases its claims. The article further looks at the contested areas of traditional knowledge, farmers