Private Law Theory

ABSTRACT
Growing concerns for the environment and the quest for sustainable development have recently prompted a general reflection at the national, European and international levels on the effects of technology, and innovation more broadly, on present and future generations and the world we are living in. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015, although not expressively addressing intellectual property, have implemented international foundational principles to measure development so it achieves social, economic and environmental sustainability. Inevitably, innovation being closely linked with scientific, economic and cultural development, it has become urgent to reflect on how to connect sustainable development to innovation regulations and to ensure that intellectual property rules in particular respect ethical principles to balance economic with non-economic interests. For the online world, numerous regulatory interventions have been made or are currently being prepared to try to create an ethical digital innovation ecosystem. The calls for a human-centered framework for artificial intelligence-driven creativity or the regulation of online platforms to protect and foster, inter alia, democratic participation, freedom of expression and privacy are good examples. At the same time, new opportunities for the dissemination and reuse of knowledge via research and education in the digital environment call for a revision of outdated legal regimes.

In short, time has come to design an ethical and sustainable intellectual property regime. That is exactly the aim of the book Intellectual Property, Ethical Innovation and Sustainability (ed Christophe Geiger), which gathers 29 outstanding authors to reflect on the matter, from the theoretical conceptualization of the relationship of intellectual property, ethics and sustainability to the analysis of the implications it would have for different IP rights and different economic sectors, to the exploration digital ethics, artificial intelligence and the right to research. This paper is the introductory chapter of this forthcoming volume.

Geiger, Christophe, Designing an Ethical and Sustainable Intellectual Property System: An Introduction (August 18, 2025), Innovation Law and Ethics Observatory (ILEO) Research Paper Series No 25-06; in: Christophe Geiger (ed), Intellectual Property, Ethical Innovation and Sustainability, Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2026.