Intellectual Property Rights

Abstract

Communicated concepts of property ownership, including intellectual property, depend on cultural values and norms. In many parts of the world, conceptual private ownership lacks definitive regulations that apply in the Western world. This lack of cultural parallelism reflects and engenders significant problems in an age where growing technological advances spread ideas and devices across cultural boundaries bringing philosophical, financial, and other practical concerns that create questions about the role of local norms in governing international transference of innovations. Intellectual property rights (IPRs) are the focus of enormous contemporary international diplomatic efforts to the business of innovative technology and the artistic arena of music, literature, and art. This article briefly outlines the historical development of Western IPRs, illustrates many problems from a non-ethnocentric study of the topic.