Browsing by Author "Cepaite, Giedre"

Human rights law and intellectual property law are separate clusters of legal system and distinguish itself with unlike characteristics. In contrary to the human rights law system, international intellectual property regime makes it obvious that intellectual property rights have commercial character and are meant to safeguard both authors’ and creators’ economic interests and technical advancement of societies. Even more, international human rights concerned bodies have explicitly established that intellectual property rights are not human rights. However, an opinion that intellectual property rights should nevertheless be treated as human rights, or intellectual property rights regime should be human rights oriented, or human rights framework should be introduced to intellectual property rights system are found within legal academy. The rationale behind the attempt to treat intellectual property rights as human rights seems to be unreasonable. Naturally, a question of the reason of such obstinate wish occurs. As psychoanalysis promise to explain human mind and human behaviour, the psychoanalytic approach will be invoked when analysing why intellectual property rights are craved as human rights. Psychoanalysis believes that the subject is constituted of three registers of physical subjectivity – the real, the symbolic and the imaginary. Each register corresponds with realms in parallel space distorting subject’s inner unity. Fragmented nature of the subject locates over conscious and unconscious mind, causing anxiety and sentencing the subject to chase aspirations that are unattainable. Moreover, as desires come from unconscious realm, the subject is not capable of perceiving what he really wants. He tries to find an answer by producing new desires over and over again but as one need is satisfied, the mysterious demand from the unconsciousness attaches to another need creating the never ending circle of need, demand desire triad and the subject of desire himself. As a result, the need to treat intellectual property rights as human rights is an outcome of an attempt to satisfy the desiring unconsciousness. Human rights language falsely promises ideal picture of universality, inalienability and equality tempting the subject to seek for it. The subject’s real nature believes that equating intellectual property rights with human rights will bring him to the ideal state with his desired imaginary perfection and, at the same, allow experiencing primal pleasure in unconscious state. This thesis reveals that the idea of treating intellectual property rights as human rights is a mere call from human unconsciousness when seeking for comfort of imaginary perfection within human ego.