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The article makes two points regarding the fundamental rights dimensions of intellectual property (IP). First, it explains why the prevailing approach to balancing the fundamental right to intellectual property with conflicting fundamental freedoms as if they were of equal rank is conceptually flawed and should be replaced by a justification paradigm. Second, it highlights the pre-eminent role of the legislature and the much more limited role of the judiciary in developing IP law. The arguments are based on an analysis of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and last but not least the German Constitutional Court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht, regarding the respective inter-/supra-/national fundamental-rights regimes.
Although intellectual property law is a distinctively Western, modern, and relatively young body of law, it has spread all over the world, now encompassing all but a very few outsiders such as Afghanistan, Somalia, and Vanuatu. This article presents three legal transfers that contributed to this development: first, from real property in land and movables to intellectual property in the late 18th century in Western Europe; second, from Western Europe, in particular from the United Kingdom and France to the rest of the world during the colonial era in the 19th and early 20th century; third, from the protection of new knowledge to the protection of traditional knowledge, held by indigenous communities in developing countries, on 5 August 1963. This story illuminates how legal transfers in a broad sense – including, but not limited to legal transplants - drive the evolution of law.