27 - Intellectual Property After George Floyd

Summary

Intellectual property (IP) and social justice as a critical intellectual movement has come of age. This volume builds on more than two decades of work at the start of the twenty-first century by founding scholars who explored the human rights obligations and other social justice dimensions of the IP regime,¹ and introduces new voices who take as their starting point that IP law is deeply implicated in structuring national, racial, gender, and other inequalities.² The volume represents significant accomplishments. First among those is the recognition that IP rights do far more than the utilitarian economic theories that dominated twentieth century IP scholarship proposed. The old view of IP rights as narrow tools to incentivize the optimal production of creative goods is incomplete.³ Today scholars recognize the myriad ways that IP rights affect not only efficiency in innovation markets, but also human rights, including access to education⁴ and healthcare;⁵ freedom of speech;⁶ and distributive justice.⁷