But, no impact when it is.
Mtima, 19—Professor of Law, Howard University, and Founder and Director of the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice, an accredited Non-governmental Organization Member of the World Intellectual Property Organization (Lateef, “IP Social Justice Theory: Access, Inclusion, and Empowerment,” Gonzaga Law Review 55, no. 3 (2019/2020): 401-420, dml)
While some IP stakeholders portend a fundamental tension between the pursuit of IP social justice and fealty to the economic traditions of the IP regime, such apprehensions are revealed as largely overstated when assessed in the context of the overarching goals of IP protection. While circumstances can certainly arise in which the need to address a particular social problem or crisis will require some imposition upon private profit interests, such conflicts are neither unique to IP commercial enterprise nor especially abhorrent to the IP ecosystem.
Human beings often direct their intellectual energies toward creative and inventive endeavor as a matter of innate curiosity, aesthetic inspiration, or utilitarian needs.46 The human drive toward self-expression and useful innovation has been manifest since the first cave paintings and the invention of the wheel. Nonetheless, material incentives to undertake specific kinds of intellectual endeavor can further stimulate such activity. This, of course, is one of the principal aims of IP protection: to provide individuals with secular incentive to engage in various intellectual endeavors toward society's ultimate gain.47
That economic incentives and rewards play an important role in promoting IP activity cannot be gainsaid. The flaw of the IP Commodification perspective, however, is the presumption that absolute and inviolate primacy must be afforded to such economic incentives and rewards to ensure adequate IP activity.48 Even in the most robustly capitalistic society, appropriate deference to social welfare considerations (such as the public health, consumer protection, child safety, etc.) rarely dissuades much less derails commercial enterprise. Even more to the point, however, it must be remembered that economic incentives are merely a means to the IP system's larger ends. If the prospect of economic reward is permitted to take precedence over pervasive progress of the arts and sciences, the IP ecosystem would become severely imbalanced.49
Notwithstanding this admonition, IP social justice is anything but antithetical to economic considerations. Economic incentives and rewards not only stimulate IP activity generally, they also serve an important social justice purpose in the achievement of the IP law's social mandate. While human instinct provides natural and powerful motivation to engage in intellectual pursuits, secular incentives can augment the drive to achieve, especially for those with limited options for personal advancement. For many in marginalized communities, IP endeavors offer unique prospects for individual and communal entrepreneurial empowerment, in addition to the promise of politico-cultural self-determination. 50