Human Rights and Intellectual Property Protection: Their Interplay in Taiwan

The interplay between human rights and intellectual property has been at the center of important debates in recent decades. This chapter includes three major sections to elaborate on Taiwan’s efforts to implement human rights in its intellectual property regime. The first section introduces the interplay between human rights and intellectual property. Section 2 explores implementation of the right to information in copyright law. Section 3 addresses the interaction between the right to health and intellectual property protection. The chapter concludes by indicating that an over-protected IP system may be an obstacle in realizing human rights. If copyright is over-protected, it may guard the economic rights of creative intellectual activity, but its enforcement might impede access to published works for persons with print disabilities and lead to negative impacts on the right to information. In the public health field, without patents, existing medications and innovative pharmaceutical products which overcome diseases would not have been developed. Therefore, inadequate expansion and enforcement of IP protection might become a barrier to the accessibility and affordability of medications and adversely affect implementation of the right to health. For this reason, the international community pursues a proper balance between human rights and IP protection. As a member of the international community, Taiwan closely follows new developments at the international level and introduces amendments to its IP laws accordingly. Regardless of Taiwan’s unique international status, it still manages to establish relevant mechanisms, consistent with international norms, in its domestic legal framework.