Cultural, Political, and Social Implications of Intellectual Property Law in an Informational Economy

Shifts towards the commodification of intangible goods – apart from historical means of economic management based on industrial strategies and the creation and sale of physical goods – have made intellectual property rights critical to capitalist accumulation in an increasingly globalized informational economy. In mainstream policy discourses, intellectual policy rights are advanced as a means to provide incentives for creativity and innovation, and to secure economic rewards for investment in research and development while providing a socially optimal level of creative and technological goods. The broader cultural, political, and social implications of the increasing expansion and extension of intellectual property have attracted heightened attention and concern since the 1990s. A discussion of the historical justifications for intellectual property in Western legal traditions is followed by a consideration of how these laws increasingly shape conditions of culture and communication. We show how the trade-based expansion of intellectual property has reoriented the traditional balance between private property rights and public interests, further entrenching historic inequalities and providing new obstacles to the realization of development and human rights in the global South, while reinforcing the marginalization of non-Western states, peoples, and cultures. The impact of intellectual property on access to medicine, health care, education, agriculture, and the preservation of food security, and biodiversity, illustrates the dangers of expanding intellectual property rights without consideration of public interests or the desirability of securing basic public goods. Responses to these debates demonstrate the need for - and the emergence of – new coalitions of states, activists, and critics able to forge a new politics of intellectual property that better balances private and public rights while furthering human rights and sustainable development