Alain Strowel - Intellectual Property and Theories of Justice [2008][A]

Book Description
Release date: December 21, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0230285023 | ISBN-13: 978-0230285026 | Edition: Reprint
Fourteen philosophers, economists and legal scholars address the question 'Can intellectual property rights be fair?' What differentiates intellectual from real property? Should libertarians or Rawlsians defend IP rights? What's wrong with free-riding? How can incentives be taken into account by theories of justice?

Reviews
‘…a much needed intervention into current debates over intellectual property and social justice…the essays here question and probe deeply the oversimplified justification of modern intellectual-property law…sophisticated and compelling, teaching much about the ways in which philosophy can illuminate and enrich economic analysis of law.’ – Madhavi Sunder, Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics

'This book of readings on intellectual property is unusual in three respects: the international cast of the contributors, the widening of the focus of analysis to include not only law and economics but also philosophy, and the decision to examine both theoretical questions and concrete practical questions. Most important is the high quality of the contributions. They not only are of high intellectual quality, but they are lucid and well written; and the introduction is a model of clarity.' - Richard A. Posner, US Court of Appeal, Seventh Circuit

'Dramatically strengthened and globalized, intellectual property rules are shaping the evolution of whole sectors of the world economy: technology, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, publishing, and entertainment. The world's most powerful corporations and governments are therefore fighting intensely over the design of these rules. The present collection highlights the main moral issues raised by intellectual property rights. It discusses these issues at the level of principle, and also in a series of focused moral analyses of the most pressing innovation-access dilemmas and of various reform ideas. An excellent introduction to a complex, shifting, and very important moral terrain.' -Thomas Pogge, Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs Yale University

'This collection of 12 essays provides a fascinating insight into the application of classical theories of justice to both fundamental issues in the field of intellectual property and contemporary, practical issues.' European Intellectual Property Review

About the Authors
AXEL GOSSERIES is a Permanent Research Fellow at the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research, based at the Chaire Hoover in economic and social ethics, University of Louvain, Belgium. His work in moral and political philosophy focuses more specifically on theories of intergenerational justice, tradable quotas schemes and the idea of workplace democracy. He is the author of Penser: la justice entre les générations (2004).

ALAIN MARCIANO is an Associate Professor at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France. He is the author of La philosophie économique and Éthiques de l'économie and a co-editor of the Elgar Companion to Economics and Philosophy and one of the main editors of the Review of Economic Philosophy.

ALAIN STROWEL is a Professor at Saint-Louis University (FUSL, Brussels), the University of Liège and the Catholic University of Brussels-Leuven, Belgium, where he teaches copyright, design and media law. He is the author of Droit d'auteur et copyright (1993) and Droit d'auteur et numérique: logiciels, bases de données, multimédia (2001).