Intellectual Property Rights: Natural Rights vs. Social Privileges

Is the right to own your creative work something you are born with, or is it a privilege society grants you in exchange for sharing your work with the world? This question sits at the heart of intellectual property law and has been hotly debated for over two centuries. The answer matters because it determines how long patents last, whether generic medicines can be produced affordably, who controls traditional knowledge, and how much access ordinary people have to culture and information. Understanding the two sides of this debate – natural rights versus social privilege – is essential for any student of IP law, particularly in the Indian context where this tension has produced landmark legislation and global-first court rulings.

The natural rights argument: creators own what they create
Hegel, Kant, and the personality theory
Denis Diderot and the 18th-century origins of the debate
The social privilege argument: IPR as a societal bargain
Condorcet’s challenge
Utilitarian theory and the economic rationale
How Indian law reflects both philosophies
Section 3(d) and the Novartis judgment: social privilege in action
The unresolved tension: which view should prevail?

The natural rights argument: creators own what they create

The natural rights position holds that intellectual property rights arise automatically from the act of creation itself, independent of any law or government recognition. This view draws its most influential philosophical backing from John Locke’s labour theory of property, articulated in his Second Treatise of Government. Locke argued that when individuals mix their labour with resources from the commons, they establish a natural and moral claim to the resulting product. Applied to intellectual creation, the idea is straightforward: a novelist who invests years of mental effort in writing a book, or an engineer who develops a new manufacturing process, has invested something deeply personal – their time, intellect, and creative energy. That investment, on its own, generates a right of ownership that no external authority needs to bestow.

Locke’s theory comes with two important built-in limits, known as Lockean provisos. First, an owner should not waste what they acquire. Second, and more critically, there must be enough and as good left for others after an acquisition. In the physical world, these provisos are relatively straightforward. In the domain of ideas and inventions, they become considerably more complex – if someone is granted an absolute ownership right over an idea, subsequent creators may find the entire field of inquiry blocked off to them.

Hegel, Kant, and the personality theory

A related branch of the natural rights tradition comes from the German idealist philosophers, particularly Hegel and Kant. Under the personality theory, creative works are understood as extensions of the creator’s own personhood. A painting, a novel, or an invention is not merely a commercial product – it is an expression of the creator’s inner self, their values, and their identity. Protecting that work therefore becomes a matter of protecting human dignity. This theory provides the philosophical basis for moral rights in copyright law – the non-economic rights that allow authors to object to distortion or mutilation of their works even after they have sold the commercial rights. India’s Copyright Act, 1957 recognises moral rights under Section 57, which gives authors the right to claim authorship and to prevent any treatment of their work that would be prejudicial to their honour or reputation – a direct legislative echo of personality theory.

Denis Diderot and the 18th-century origins of the debate

The natural rights view found one of its earliest and most passionate articulations in the French Enlightenment writer Denis Diderot. In 1763, Diderot was commissioned by the Paris Book Guild to write a defence of authors’ property rights. He argued that the products of a writer’s mind were the most intimate form of property imaginable – more personal than land, more inseparable from the self than any physical possession. According to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Diderot held that ideas are subjective, originating in the individual mind, and therefore constitute the most inviolable form of private property. For Diderot, a book privilege granted by the king was not a favour from the state but a legal confirmation of a right that already existed naturally, rooted in the author’s creative labour.

The opposing view rejects the idea that intellectual property rights have any natural foundation. Proponents of the social privilege view argue that ideas, once expressed, are inherently social – they belong to everyone. Any legal right to exclude others from using an idea is an artificial construct, created by society for a specific purpose, and justified only if it produces a net benefit for that society. This position found its most influential early voice in Condorcet, a French mathematician and philosopher who wrote in direct response to Diderot.

Condorcet’s challenge

The Marquis de Condorcet argued forcefully that literary and intellectual property is not a right derived from the natural order – it is a privilege founded in society itself. He contended that ideas inhere in nature and are simultaneously accessible to all people; they are not produced by a single individual’s genius alone but are the fruit of a collective process of experience and accumulated knowledge. Granting individual monopoly rights over ideas, Condorcet believed, concentrated productive activity in too few hands and impeded the free dissemination of knowledge that society needed to progress. His position was blunt: intellectual property is not a true right, it is a privilege – and a potentially harmful one.

From this standpoint, granting an author or inventor exclusive rights is not recognising something that already exists. It is creating an exception to the normal state of free information flow, justifiable only because it incentivises people to create and disclose their inventions in the first place.

Utilitarian theory and the economic rationale

Condorcet’s scepticism found a more formal theoretical home in utilitarian theory, associated with philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Utilitarianism evaluates rights and policies based on whether they maximise overall social welfare. Applied to intellectual property, utilitarians argued that granting inventors and authors temporary monopoly rights would incentivise the creation and public disclosure of new knowledge. Once the exclusive period ends, the invention or creative work enters the public domain, where anyone can freely use and build upon it. This is the logic that underpins the time-limited nature of all IP rights – patents last 20 years from the date of filing in India, and copyright generally lasts for the lifetime of the author plus 60 years under the Copyright Act, 1957.

The utilitarian approach treats IPR as a calculated policy tool. Society grants creators a limited monopoly as an incentive, extracts the benefit of disclosure (and ultimately, public access), and refuses to extend that monopoly beyond what is strictly necessary to achieve its purpose. Under this framework, there is nothing inherently unjust about denying patent protection to a minor tweak on an existing drug if that tweak does not genuinely advance public knowledge or health – which is precisely the logic behind some of India’s most significant IP law provisions.

How Indian law reflects both philosophies

India’s intellectual property framework does not sit neatly in either camp. It incorporates elements of both the natural rights tradition and the social privilege view, often calibrating the balance to address the country’s distinct developmental priorities in healthcare, education, and access to knowledge.

On the natural rights side, the Indian Constitution provides a foundation for property rights through Article 300A, which guarantees that no person shall be deprived of their property save by authority of law. The Right to Freedom of Speech and Expression under Article 19(1)(a) also has a natural kinship with copyright, since expressing one’s ideas through writing or art is a fundamental liberty. The Copyright Act, 1957, the Patents Act, 1970, the Trade Marks Act, 1999, and other statutes collectively give creators and inventors enforceable rights over their work – rights that carry real economic value.

But Indian law is also deeply marked by the social privilege perspective. The basic aim of conferring an IPR is to give social recognition to its holder, and this social recognition carries an implicit obligation: exclusive rights come paired with exceptions that protect the public interest. The Copyright Act, 1957 contains broad fair dealing provisions that permit use of copyrighted works for purposes such as research, private study, criticism, and education – a statutory acknowledgment that knowledge must flow freely in certain contexts, regardless of who owns the copyright.

No provision in Indian IP law illustrates the social privilege philosophy more powerfully than Section 3(d) of the Patents Act, 1970. Introduced through the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2005, Section 3(d) prevents pharmaceutical companies from obtaining patents on new forms of known substances – such as salts, polymorphs, or esters – unless those new forms demonstrate significantly enhanced therapeutic efficacy over the original compound. The provision was deliberately designed to stop patent evergreening, a practice where companies make minor, non-therapeutic changes to an existing drug to extend their monopoly beyond the original patent term and block affordable generic competition.

The provision was tested in one of the most consequential IP cases in Indian legal history: Novartis AG v. Union of India (2013) 6 SCC 1. The Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis sought a patent in India for the beta-crystalline form of imatinib mesylate, the active ingredient in its blockbuster cancer drug Gleevec, used in the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia. Novartis had already held patents on earlier forms of imatinib in other jurisdictions. In India, the Patent Office rejected the application under Section 3(d) because Novartis could not demonstrate that the new crystalline form had greater therapeutic efficacy compared to the known substance – only improved bioavailability and stability, which the law treats as insufficient.

Novartis appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, challenging both the validity of Section 3(d) and its application. The Supreme Court upheld the rejection. The Court interpreted “efficacy” in Section 3(d) to mean specifically therapeutic efficacy – actual improvement in patient outcomes – and held that physicochemical improvements such as better stability or absorption do not meet that standard without clinical proof of better treatment results. The judgment was widely understood as a decisive statement that India would use the flexibilities available under the TRIPS Agreement to prioritise public health access over pharmaceutical company monopolies.

The practical consequences were immediate and significant. Generic versions of imatinib mesylate were available at a fraction of the branded price – with the branded drug reportedly costing up to 90% more than its generic equivalent. The Supreme Court’s ruling ensured that Indian generic manufacturers could continue producing the affordable version, maintaining access for cancer patients across the country who could not have afforded the patented alternative.

The unresolved tension: which view should prevail?

Neither the natural rights nor the social privilege view has “won” this debate – and arguably, neither ever will, because each captures a genuine and important truth. Creators do invest real effort, creativity, and resources in their work, and there is a legitimate moral case that they should benefit from it. At the same time, knowledge genuinely does build on what came before; all innovations inevitably build upon existing collective knowledge, making claims of absolute, individual creation somewhat overstated.

What makes this debate particularly relevant for Indian law students is that it is not merely academic. The philosophy you apply determines very practical outcomes: whether traditional communities can assert rights over their collectively developed knowledge; how copyright exceptions for education should be interpreted in classrooms; whether a new drug is genuinely innovative or merely evergreened; and how India should negotiate IP provisions in trade agreements with countries whose legal systems tilt more strongly toward the natural rights tradition.

Most functional IP systems – including India’s – try to hold both perspectives in a productive tension rather than resolving it in favour of one side. IPR is granted as limited monopolistic rights that acknowledge the creator’s contribution while building in time limits, public interest exceptions, compulsory licensing provisions, and patentability standards that serve the broader community. The result is a system that neither fully recognises natural rights (there are always time limits and exceptions) nor treats IP as a pure social privilege (creators receive real and enforceable exclusive rights). Understanding why both philosophies leave their imprint on IP law is what allows you to read statutes, argue cases, and engage in policy debates with the depth and nuance they require.

What do you think? If intellectual property rights are a natural entitlement arising from creative labour, why should patents expire after 20 years rather than lasting forever like ownership of physical land? And if IPR is purely a social privilege granted to incentivise innovation, how should the law respond when a creator’s moral connection to their work – their personality, as Hegel might say – is being violated even after the commercial rights have been sold?

References

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Table of Contents

The natural rights argument: creators own what they create 🔗

Hegel, Kant, and the personality theory 🔗

Denis Diderot and the 18th-century origins of the debate 🔗

The social privilege argument: IPR as a societal bargain 🔗

Condorcet’s challenge 🔗

Utilitarian theory and the economic rationale 🔗

How Indian law reflects both philosophies 🔗

Section 3(d) and the Novartis judgment: social privilege in action 🔗

The unresolved tension: which view should prevail? 🔗

References

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Management of IPRs