ABSTRACT
Intellectual property rights have never been as much in the news as they are today. Developing countries and civil society organizations rail against drug companies for charging exorbitant prices for treatments for patent-protected drugs to combat AIDS, a disease afflicting many African countries on a scale comparable to the medieval era Black Death. Indigenous peoples and advocacy groups supporting their rights condemn corporate 'biopirates' for making money out of their knowledge and claiming patent rights for 'inventions' essentially identical to knowledge acquired from tribal healers. Concerns are raised that patenting plants, animals, genes and gene fragments is not only immoral and even sacrilegious but may also be stifling innovation. And while the trend is towards ever stronger intellectual property right protection, increasingly determined efforts are made to buck the trend, as exemplified by Napster, the Open Source and Free Software movements, and the access to medicines and no patents on life campaigns.
