Exposing the Processes of Empire in the International Protection of Intellectual Property

LAW AND SOCIETY PERSPECTIVES ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, Debora Halbert, William Gallagher, eds., Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming

25 Pages Posted: 26 Feb 2013 Last revised: 28 May 2017

See all articles by Doris Estelle Long

Doris Estelle Long

University of Illinois Chicago School of Law; VeraKen Productions; Doris Long Consulting

Date Written: September 16, 2012

Abstract

The foundational international documents of international intellectual property protection – the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property – were created within the economic, sociologic and political milieu of Nineteenth Century Neo-Imperialism. Neo-imperialism is only one narrative that helps explain the dissonant policy choices reflected in these documents concerning the scope of protection afforded patents and copyrights. It is a powerful one, nonetheless, because it places the empowerment of various actors in the debates over conflicting choices between protection and free access against the more complex and yet more realistic milieu in which protectionist choices were made. Such analysis demonstrates that the standards memorialized in the Berne and Paris Conventions did not represent any inevitable protectionist choice. To the contrary, conflicting concerns among domestic actors regarding the impact of 'free trade,' access to knowledge (often termed 'science' in the debates), and protection of workers over private multinational actors were not wholly resolved in the march to uniformity that the Berne and Paris Conventions represented. Yet the narrative of imperialism, with its four major dynamic processes - the hunt for raw materials, the search for foreign markets for the end products of Western technology, a 'civilizing' message of progress, and the unilateral nature of its standard making - had an undoubted impact, providing not only the philosophical analogues for emerging international standards, but also the institutional and regulatory webs necessary to place economic and political power in the hands of the actors and institutional governance structures that helped solidify generally protectionist policy choices. While the processes of Empire do not fully explain the choices made, they shed new light on the normative values represented by the Berne and Paris Conventions and warn of the role economics and political expediency can play in the face of dissonant policy choices in today’s debates.

Keywords: empire, harmonization, imperialism, intellectual property, Berne Convention

JEL Classification: 034, F02, F13

Suggested Citation

Long, Doris Estelle, Exposing the Processes of Empire in the International Protection of Intellectual Property (September 16, 2012). LAW AND SOCIETY PERSPECTIVES ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, Debora Halbert, William Gallagher, eds., Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2214792

Doris Estelle Long (Contact Author)

University of Illinois Chicago School of Law ( email )

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HOME PAGE: http://dorislongconsulting.com

VeraKen Productions ( email )

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HOME PAGE: http://verakenproductions.com

Doris Long Consulting ( email )

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United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.dorislongconsulting.com

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