feminist epistemology and intellectual property: imagining feminist intellectual property
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Feminist Epistemology and Intellectual Property: Imagining Feminist Intellectual
Property
Tatum Lindsay
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014
GoldieBlox
• GoldieBlox + Beastie Boys + Fair Use
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014
The Beginning
• Doing “selfish” research
• From experience to inquiry
• From inquiry to “imagining a feminist vision of intellectual property law”
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014
Methods
• Halberstam, Judith J. Female Masculinity, Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. 9-12. Print.
• “’Queer methodology’ responds to various locations of information…and betrays a certain disloyalty to conventional disciplinary methods.”
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014
Definitions
• Intellectual Property
• Feminist Epistemology
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014
What justification do you have?
“Feminist epistemology seeks to provide ways of creating new possibilities and new realities – they seek to answer not with a simple defined answer, but with more, perhaps better questions.”
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014
Feminist Epistemology + IP
“A feminist theoretical frameworks deeply challenges intellectual property regulations and laws. Mobilizing feminist epistemologies alongside intellectual property laws permits serious investigation of current conceptions of the American legal tradition, and, more specifically, concepts of ownership and property rights.”
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014
The Good Stuff
“By using feminist epistemological tools and perspectives to discuss the challenges and rewards of applying a feminist critique of intellectual property, I will propose four new possible fields of vision…
(1) an elimination of intellectual property laws altogether, (2) a set of intellectual property laws that will eliminate royalties and specific protections to individuals, but not the law itself, (3) an ideological shift in the law that would allow communal and feelings-based knowledges to be afforded equal protections, and (4) a quota system that would ensure that women are equally represented as owners of intellectual property in the world.”
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014
(1)
“Feminists should be interested in considering this option because it is a solution that completely and directly deconstructs the notion that things that come out of your mind (ideas) are things to be, regulated, protected, bought, disputed, and commoditized. By privileging no one’s intellectual property, we privilege all ‘intellectual property’.”
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014
(2)
“Eliminating royalties and specific protections to individuals totally deconstructs and challenges why intellectual property laws exist. The reason for eliminating royalties gained from registered works is to redefine the participation in a system that traditionally privileges a masculine interpretation of global economics: capitalism. Intellectual property laws seek to stimulate a robust capitalistic free-market by providing a rich and competitive marketplace.”
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014
(3)
“Provisions in the law do exist to allow groups to have joint-authorship, but this kind of provision is not the kind of protection that a feminist epistemological framework would seek out.
Patricia Hill Collins, an inspirer behind feminist standpoint epistemology, proposed that actual lived experience is a site of knowledge production. To expand on her initial vision of this, one could imagine a world in which feelings, traumas, biographies, oral histories, and even dinner parties are considered valid sites of knowledge production.”
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014
(4)
Women in particular have made significant advances in the field recently, but are still underrepresented as registrants. More importantly, why is this important?The nomination of Michelle K. Lee to Deputy Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office is a step in the right direction, but is representation in leadership the only way to fulfill this feminist fantasy?
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014
Conclusion and Questions
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014