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1 J. Intell. Prot. Stud. 3 (2017)

handle is hein.journals/jnloitl1 and id is 1 raw text is: Journal of Intellectual Property Studies Vol. I, January 2017, pp. 3-5 FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK We live in a shackled world. Our freedom and liberty are proscribed by rights conferred upon others. In most cases, such a notion is necessary - it operates on the Lockean argument that an individual must be allowed to reap rewards from the efforts the said individual invests in creating something. For instance, in its most elementary form, this idea prevents people from stealing bread since the creator of the bread is entitled to profit from the bread by the virtue of him/her having invested labour into creating the bread. This entitlement is treated as a legal right. To receive just deserts, the creator of a work must be allowed to benefit from his/her creations. This, however, is an extremely deontological argument because it views justice from the lens of what is categorically fair detached from what the outcome of a measure would be. Taken to an extreme, this idea can have negative effects on society. As is seen through the battle over access to medicines and pharmaceutical patents, allowing creators to enjoy unlimited rights is not a very tenable argument if this results in the death of millions of patients who cannot afford medicines at the creators' prices. The deontological viewpoint fails to address issues that arise when society is gravely harmed by the creator reaping unrestricted benefits of the creation. The justification for providing certain rights to creators is fortified by a more consequentialist argument. In intellectual property, this takes the form of the incentive theory which was first used by William Nordhaus while determining an appropriate term of protection for patents. This theory justifies the grant of monopoly rights to creators on the basis that such rights would enable creators to profit from their creations which, in turn, would incentivize them to create in the future. In absence of such incentive, the theory argues, societal progress would be halted. If creations that are generally protected by intellectual property laws - such as original creative works, designs and novel inventions - are made publicly available, owners of intellectual property would be unable to obtain financial returns. Consequently, they would stop creating, and the world would be deprived of new literature, cinema, designs, technologies and even medicines. Rapid technological progress has posed a severe challenge to this perception. The internet, for example, has created a plethora of avenues for enabling access in breach of rights of intellectual property owners. Piracy of movies, music, books and academic works has become rampant. In response, the creative industry has initiated lawsuits against access-enabling entities such as Napster, Megaupload, The Pirate Bay, Aaron Swartz, and Aaaarg. In many of these cases, the industry has even obtained favourable verdicts. Despite such extensive litigation, online piracy is still thriving. New-age technologies such as 3D printing will exacerbate this problem by allowing consumers to self-produce goods that are protected by intellectual property laws. 3

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