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摘要

Patents and copyright laws are meant to be the friends of innovation and are a foundation of the modern business world. But there is a growing risk that intellectual-property laws are now so stringent that they are actually inhibiting innovation, rather than protecting it. The call for a new approach was made forcefully this week in a statement called the Adelphi Charter, issued by a group of prominent legal scholars, artists, scientists and experts from around the world. The Adelphi group are a varied crew ranging from Gilberto Gil, the Brazilian culture minister (and pop star) to Sir John Sulston, a Nobel-winning scientist who helped decode the human genome, and James Boyle, a law professor at Duke University. They believe that the intellectual-property system is starting to lean so far in favour of private enrichment that it no longer serves the public interest.