Patenting the future: The impact of Intellectual Property Rights on democratic functioning in the 21st century

摘要

Late 20th century reforms to Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) legislation, specifically pertaining to the patenting of knowledge and technological innovation, both target and significantly impact the direction and scope of international trade agreements. Reflecting the will of industrial economy superpowers, these agreements provide insight into political mechanisms which extend far beyond traditional examinations conducted by economic historians. The centrality of patents to national industrial economic trajectories has been overshadowed by historical studies of the technologies associated with them, warranting a detailed investigation into how patents have quietly dominated global political maneuvering over the past half millennium. The overall analysis proposes significant reconfiguration of IPRs legislation, through which a balance between trade liberalization and progressive collectivism may be achieved. Five chapters comprise this study, each designed to locate epistemic shifts in the broad history of patents in relation to various political and economic directives of advanced nations.