Protect or Plunder?: Understanding Intellectual Property Rights (Global Issues)

Vandana Shiva shows how intellectual protection is being transformed into corporate plunder, looking at how this Western-inspired and unprecedented widening of the concept does not in fact stimulate human creativity and the generation of knowledge This compelling book looks at what kinds of ideas, technologies, identification of genes, even manipulations of life forms can be owned and exploited for profit by giant corporations—an issue that lies at the heart of the so-called “knowledge economy.” Shiva shows how intellectual protection is being exploited by transnational corporations in order to increase their profits at the expense of the health of ordinary people—in particular the poor and farmers. This book highlights why popular resistance around the world is rising to the WTO that polices this new intellectual world order, and the pharmaceutical, biotech, and other corporations which dominate it—and the new technologies they are foisting upon humans.