Intellectual Property and the Human Rights of Companies in Europe

Through a systematic analysis of the context and drafting history of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the book uncovers a hitherto unnoticed disconnect between the moral justification for the inclusion of property rights in the ECHR and the legal scope of protection of the right of legal persons to enjoyment of their possessions in Article 1 of the First Protocol. The study shows how, before the adoption of the ECHR, the concepts of legal personality and possessions functioned as legal fictions in European civil and common law to facilitate ownership and sale of tangible and intangible property, shares, debts, securities and intellectual property. The Court's construction of the ambiguous text of Article 1 of the First Protocol and its application to corporate intellectual property rights is reviewed in this light and shown to have been initially anchored in the legal fictions of national laws and later expanded and reinforced by European Union law. Aurora Plomer is Professor Emeritus of Intellectual Property and Human Rights at the University of Bristol. She has published numerous books and articles in peer-reviewed international journals on the interface between intellectual property, human rights and innovation. The research for this monograph was funded by a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust (MRF 2019-112).