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"Foreword" [2016] ELECD 984; in Lai, C. Jessica; Maget Dominicé, Antoinette (eds), "Intellectual Property and Access to Im/material Goods" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016) xi

Book Title: Intellectual Property and Access to Im/material Goods

Editor(s): Lai, C. Jessica; Maget Dominicé, Antoinette

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781784716615

Section Title: Foreword

Number of pages: 8

Extract:

Foreword
The object of intellectual property rights in the modern age was to
regulate access to material goods. By abstracting from a material
"embodiment" to the intangible work or invention, copyright and patent
law dematerialised artefacts, the better to control their manufacture,
marketing and consumption. The material features or qualities of a thing,
the ingredients and techniques that went into its composition or manu-
facture, were translated into a "type" which eclipsed its tangible tokens.
Upstream, "access" was configured by the rights given to industrial
concerns to control the manufacture and circulation of the material
tokens; downstream, the exercise of these rights shaped what kinds of
cultural experience could be enjoyed, and how. Trade marks, which are
not usually taken as the central case of intellectual property, might
nonetheless afford the ultimate realisation of this technique; first, because
they dematerialise artefacts into a "type" whose reach is coextensive with
the reach of the mass media; and, second, because this semiotic figure
infuses and animates the artefact (and its consumers) to a degree that no
work or invention could do. Apparently, the strategy of dematerialisation
is no longer as plausible or as effective as it was. Intellectual property,
the pre-eminent science of the intangible, is in danger of overdosing on
immateriality. Works and inventions are already immaterial, or already
dematerialised. Software inventions are problematic because they seem to
lack the tangible articulations and effects of "real" machines, and digital
works are not reproduced (or created) in the manner of manuscripts ...