Intellectual Property Rights - IPR 

This refers to the ownership of a creation of the mind, which can be a technology, discoveries and inventions; musical, literary and artistic works; words and symbols. The idea of intellectual property is two-fold: (i) to express the moral and economic right of the author or creator and (ii) to provide an incentive for the creation of new works, promote discoveries or inventions. When a person or a corporation has an exclusive right to use a discovery or invention, say a new medicine, then there can be a monopoly price for that product. This high price and the extra profit so earned is expected to provide an incentive for new knowledge and inventions. But knowledge is a public good, in that the consumption by one person does not reduce its consumption by another person. For example, one student's learning economics does not diminish any other persons knowledge of economics. On the contrary, we may argue that the more the knowledge of economics or anything by a large number of persons, the more likely is to be not only the spread but even the advance of knowledge. Consequently, there is a conflict between the incentive to make inventions and discoveries and the spread of knowledge. The high price of a medicine, say for treating cancer of HIV/ AIDS, may lead to the inability of large numbers to not afford treatment. In such cases of public health or medial emergency, it has been ruled in the WTO, that countries may insist on compulsory licensing or production of generics.