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, 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, prior to 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 IPRs 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.