Expanding Networks of Access Role of Imperialism in IP Law Keerthi

EXPANDING NETWORKS OF ACCESS: THE ROLE OF IMPERIALISM IN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW

Abstract

This paper shall explore the role of imperialism in the creation of intellectual property (IP) law, and seeks to integrate a human rights perspective of global access to information with the necessity of carving out specialized conduits to preserve the construction, monetization, and archiving of marginalized and vulnerable perspectives that might be eclipsed by hegemonic pathways to innovation in the lack of individual civil legal protections designed by the law. The colonial, capital, and imperial apparatuses have, for a long time, functioned as barriers to information access that serve to legitimize it with the framework of intellectual property law—ostensibly, authors are protected via this mechanism of exclusivity, but in practice, it insulates the academic world from effective application of theory upon the subjects constituting the research, creating a false but carefully maintained dichotomy between the sciences and academia. However, IP law can also protect the academics of a vulnerable population by disabling mainstream access to information that can be economically or culturally exploited, and provide the means for members of such communities to disseminate information from the inside at their discretion, in the best interests of their community. For example, studies done on the impact of access to information in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) following intra-regional or inter-regional conflicts show a positive correlation between the protection of intellectual property amongst the peoples of the OPT, which serves to undermine the systemic destruction undergone by the academic institutions of the OPT in the past, and the economic growth of the region. Ultimately, however, such a consequential effect further defers to the violent and dehumanizing technology of conditional access to information, requiring a level of assimilation from academics from vulnerable communities in order to facilitate their study, thus increasing the alienation between the subjects and the researcher of a study. The author argues that divesting from imperial institutions of intellectual property is an economic risk that vulnerable and marginalized peoples nevertheless must undertake to formulate their own systems of information access and protection thereof, so as to merit an independent application of the law that focuses on benefits to the collective, as opposed to solely the self. It necessitates a re-orientation of IP law from an anti-imperialist perspective, allowing for different systems of research and development to exist in harmony, and placing long-term economic growth over the profit-driven market competition that constitutes the bounds of IP law.