This book looks at the regime of international intellectual property law from the
perspectives of human security. The concept of human security, we believe, provides
a good framework for a contemporary reassessment of international intellectual
property laws and for their modernization.
The concept of human security, though not directly labeled as such, received
initial attention in theoretical works such as Barry Buzan’s People States and Fear,
which argued that national and international security must be anchored in individual
security.1 Subsequently, as the concept received express affirmation and prominence
in the 1990s, it came to signify that the rationale of human endeavors
nationally, regionally, and internationally should be to advance the security of
human beings as individuals, as groups, and as constituent elements of humanity
as a whole.
Professors McFarlane and Khong in their authoritative work on the intellectual
history of human security at the United Nations, discuss how the concept of
human security came about, how it came to refer to the individual as the subject in
need of security, and how the concept has fared in its development dimensions and
its protection dimensions (human rights).