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Peukert, Alexander --- "Intellectual property: The global spread of a legal concept" [2015] ELECD 1080; in Drahos, Peter; Ghidini, Gustavo; Ullrich, Hanns (eds), "Kritika: Essays on Intellectual Property" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015) 114

Book Title: Kritika: Essays on Intellectual Property

Editor(s): Drahos, Peter; Ghidini, Gustavo; Ullrich, Hanns

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781784712051

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: Intellectual property: The global spread of a legal concept

Author(s): Peukert, Alexander

Number of pages: 20

Abstract/Description:

Although intellectual property law is a distinctively Western, modern, and relatively young body of law, it has spread all over the world, now encompassing all but a very few outsiders such as Afghanistan, Somalia, and Vanuatu. This chapter presents three legal transfers that contributed to this development: first, from real property in land and movables to intellectual property in the late eighteenth century in Western Europe; second, from Western Europe, in particular from the United Kingdom and France to the rest of the world during the colonial era in the nineteenth and early twentieth century; third, from the protection of new knowledge to the protection of traditional knowledge, held by indigenous communities in developing countries, on 5 August 1963. This story illuminates how legal transfers in a broad sense – including, but not limited to legal transplants – drive the evolution of law.