Restating arguments on intellectual property rights

Abstract

There are various levels and arguments involved in the debate on Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). Four aspects have merited attention, the consequentialist, where the dispute is shown to be primarily empirical, the intrinsic, where the disagreement concerns the norms of a free society, the incentive, where IPRs are seen as incentives that are socially beneficial, and the desert, where the inventor's desert is the basis of dispute. The authors make a case for an alternative patent regime.