The Nature of Intellectual Property Rights considering the relation between the author's prerogatives and the Human Rights and Civil Liberties

摘要

The intellectual property protection represents a source of violation of fundamental rights and civil liberties, i.e. the right to protection of personal data, the right to privacy, freedom to send and receive information, freedom of information, freedom to contract and freedom to carry out economic activities (freedom of commerce). The best guideline is provided by the CJEU's and US Supreme Court's case law that are highly complex and nuanced, not denying in any way the importance of intellectual property. In this field we have no absolute but relative rights corresponding to a propter rem obligation of the owner of the intellectual creation's material support (i.e. electronic support), which cannot reproduce it without a breach of the author's patrimonial and moral rights, considering also that the intellectual creation, by its nature, cannot be appropriated by a person. This impossibility of appropriating a piece of work is not just a consequence of its intangibility, but it also derives from the relationship between the intellectual creations and society, universal patrimony and knowledge.