Adelphi Charter
Intellectual property (IP) policy underpins the development of creative and scientific works and is crucial to the access to knowledge, the public commons, and human rights. Patents affect the research, development, and distribution of software, medicine, transportation, and food. Copyright policy governs access to all forms of media and determines how knowledge is constructed and shared. The Adelphi Charter on Creativity, Innovation, and Intellectual Property is a document supporting IP reform to increase global access to information, creative works, and the sciences. This entry first describes the development of the Charter and the reasons behind it. It then discusses the nine points of the Charter.
The Charter was commissioned by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce in 2004 and is a statement from various academics, practitioners, government officials, artists, and other experts across fields that harbor IP concerns. Adelphi offers policy proposals across the IP spectrum that are meant to counterbalance the international strengthening of IP laws, regulations, and enforcement. These proposals influenced numerous other declarations and treaties, including Europe’s Copyright for Creativity, the Access to Knowledge Treaty, and the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Development Agenda. All of these exist to ascertain fair and just IP law and policy.
The central tenet of criticism of late 20th- and 21st-century IP is that copyright and patent law are continually strengthened for corporate rights holders at the expense of creativity, innovation, human rights, and traditional knowledge. Draconian IP policy is considered by the authors of the Adelphi Charter to be a threat to scientific, economic, and cultural development. The Charter consists of guidelines for future IP policy intended to benefit both rights holders and the public. The Charter does not include strategies for implementing IP reform but instead provides an argumentative and intellectual structure for activists and politicians to promote in the policy arena.
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Justification for IP Reform
The acceleration of IP rights is in line with the Washington Consensus, a set of policy recommendations that applies free trade and liberalization to development policy. The landmark policy agreement affecting IP in support of the Washington Consensus is the 1995 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). TRIPS affected all levels of IP, from biotechnology to counterfeit DVDs, and pressured the developing world to import the IP standards of the United States and Europe.
In addition to TRIPS, the United States and the European Union engage in bi- and multilateral agreements with other states that favor the economic interests of dominant economic powers. States that refused to negotiate or did not meet the obligations of the agreements are often branded as pirates and accused of supporting counterfeiting and theft. For states that signed on to TRIPS, violations could mean a court hearing in front of the World Trade Organization. Nations in violation of U.S. or EU IP mandates are typically pressured with economic threats and sanctions so that they will reform their laws.
Other expansions of patent and copyright law include copyright term extensions, database protections, digital rights management, and expansions of patents on pharmaceuticals, genetics, and traditional knowledge. These expansions are often placed into TRIPS-Plus agreements that go beyond the IP treaty. Copyright extensions are criticized for keeping information out of the public domain for inordinate amounts of time. Database protections, such as the EU’s Database Directive, are widely criticized for being anticompetitive by spurring monopolies of information and failing at the stated goal of growth and innovation. Digital rights management is similarly criticized for giving rights holders too much power to control information by creating digital locks that cannot legally be bypassed. Patent expansions harm the developing world by giving select corporations control over the distribution of medicines and diagnostic methods and by hindering business processes through software protections. In the case of traditional knowledge, patent expansions often allow Western corporations to patent farming techniques and crops that were developed in other parts of the world.
Analysis of the Charter
The Adelphi Charter offers specific policy proposals across the IP spectrum and develops a counterbalance to TRIPS and TRIPS-Plus agreements to be used as guidelines for future IP reform. The Charter encourages limits on digital rights management, broad provisions for public access to information, and weakening database protections. It also calls for nuanced policy that considers local conditions, human rights, and economic growth. Adelphi is not solely focused on weakening IP protections but calls for strengthening protections where necessary to generate economic growth. There are nine points to the Charter.
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The first three points address the purpose of IP law. The authors contend that IP should serve to enhance the arts and sciences and facilitate creativity. IP policy should encourage the creation and sharing of information without giving rights holders too much control over the availability of works. IP policy should be crafted in the spirit of defending basic human rights including employment, health, education, and culture. The emphasis on human rights throughout the Adelphi Charter addresses the problem of pharmaceutical patents that raise prices and culturally harmful patents on traditional knowledge. The authors stress the need for a robust public domain for information and for IP to be fairly applied alongside the public domain in order to encourage economic growth and innovation.
The next three points argue for limitations to patents and copyrights. Gratuitous copyright extensions that prevent works from entering the public domain are discouraged. The authors call for an end to the protection of databases and other abstract collections of facts. The Charter then states the need for an elimination of patents that protect software, medical diagnoses, computer code, educational methods, and other protections of mathematical and scientific processes. Using IP to lock down these forms of information is culturally damaging and affects the ability of developing economies to flourish.
The final three points of the Adelphi Charter lay out a model for IP to be evenly and fairly distributed internationally. These points encourage models such as Creative Commons and open source software to expand the public domain in order to encourage innovation and access to knowledge. The authors take aim at TRIPS and TRIPS-Plus agreements by stressing the dangers of a colonialism of information that ignores individual countries’ political and economic circumstances. The emphasis here is on human rights as opposed to the economic interests of the United States, European, and corporate actors from within those regions. The Charter closes by discouraging the creation of new categories of IP law or extending patent and copyright terms. It states that any changes to existing IP law should be transparently, rigorously, and empirically argued to improve economic conditions and human rights.
The original version of this article was published by SAGE Publications in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Journalism.