The Unseen Arsenal: IPRs as a Weapon in Armed Conflicts

Armed conflict is inevitable most of the time between two high-contracting parties. The world has seen two world wars that killed millions of humans and injured many more. Armed conflict in the last few decades has seen a surge of new means and methods of warfare. Various nations are investing money in developing their war preparedness and devising new ways of combating it. It is not uncommon for countries to take advantage of armed conflicts to gain an advantage in various areas, including intellectual property (IP) rights. The world had never imagined that intellectual property rights could be used as an economic weapon during the war and as a countermeasure to economic sanctions and other soft law mechanisms for the implementation of international law. Intellectual property piracy has become a new method of economic sanctions, and many high-contracting parties to the armed conflict are using it during war or will use it in future armed conflicts. The present paper will discuss three major dimensions of IPR and armed conflicts, ie., (i) the role of intellectual property rights during armed conflict; (ii) how countries can use intellectual property rights to impose economic sanctions; and (iii) how intellectual property rights can be used as countermeasures to economic sanctions imposed on any state by other states.