Intellectual Property Rights: A Critical History
  • 2005/253 pages
  • iPolitics: Global Challenges in the Information Age

Intellectual Property Rights:

A Critical History

Christopher May and Susan K. Sell
Hardcover: $65.00
ISBN: 978-1-58826-363-6
Ebook: $65.00
ISBN: 978-1-62637-002-9
With intellectual property widely acknowledged today as a key component of economic development, those accused of stealing knowledge and information are also charged with undermining industrial innovation, artistic creativity, and the availability of information itself. How valid are these claims? Has the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement ushered in a new, better era? Christopher May and Susan Sell trace the history of social conflict and political machinations surrounding the making of property out of knowledge.

Ranging from ancient commerce in Greek poems to present-day controversies about online piracy and the availability of AIDS drugs in the poorest countries, May and Sell present intellectual property law as a continuing process in which particular conceptions of rights and duties are institutionalized; each settlement prompts new disputes, policy shifts, and new disputes again. They also examine the post-TRIPs era in the context of this process. Their account of two thousand years of technological advances, legal innovation, and philosophical arguments about the character of knowledge production suggests that the future of intellectual property law will be as contested as its past.

Christopher May is professor of political economy at Lancaster University. His recent publications include The Information Society: A Sceptical View and A Global Political Economy of Intellectual Property Rights: The New Enclosures? The late Susan K. Sell was professor emerita of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. She is author of Private Power, Public Law: The Globalization of Intellectual Property Rights and Power and Ideas: North-South Politics of Intellectual Property and Antitrust.

No rights in South Asia.