Terrorism and Intellectual Property Rights

Abstract

The threat of international terrorism has generated many different conflicts between individual rights and national security. Since the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, the federal government has enacted laws and policies, such as the PATRIOT Act, which restrict the privacy and freedom of citizens and noncitizens in order to protect the United States from harm [1,2]. Different states within the United States have considered or adopted laws for responding to the public health threats related to bioterrorism, such as the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MSEHPA) [3,4]. Government agencies, universities, and scientific journals have reviewed policies concerning scientific openness, censorship, and classified research [5][6][7]. The military has explored different ways of loosening human research protections for the sake of testing experimental vaccines or treatments for biological or chemical weapons attacks [8,9].