IP’s history is flawed and violent, but researching and advocating ways to expand the purview of IP law empowers communities and dismantles violent histories both in and out of the field.

The first step toward achieving Intellectual Property Empowerment is promoting pervasive adherence to the obligations of social justice in the development, interpretation and enforcement of intellectual property law. For decades, many courts and governing bodies have simply failed to correct or curtail institutionalized intellectual property injustice. For example, in the United States, African Americans and other marginalized groups have been systemically deprived of the commercial revenues and public recognition due from their intellectual property achievements.8 Even when confronted with uncontroverted evidence of intellectual property misappropriation and outright theft, courts have typically regarded these travesties as examples of the unwise or uneducated exercise of the freedom of contract, or “random” acts of race, gender or class exploitation, all beyond the purview of the intellectual property law. 9 Consequently American courts often fail to do equity or otherwise administer social justice, on the grounds that providing such redress would distort the structure and integrity of the intellectual property regime.

In the developing world, Western misappropriation of the traditional knowledge and cultural expressions (“TKE”) of indigenous peoples is as widespread as the pillaging of their natural resources. While Western intellectual property rights holders demand greater international protection for their own property rights, asserting them even in the face of health and education crises, many of these very same entities blithely ignore the rights and traditions of developing world communities, often relying upon Western precepts of intellectual property to justify their conduct. 10 Given their past and continuing experiences, it is not surprising that many historically marginalized groups and developing nations have little interest in participating in or respecting Western intellectual property regimes.

The recognition of the fundamental social justice tenets of equitable inclusion, access and empowerment in the promulgation, interpretation and enforcement of intellectual property law would dismantle this unfortunate status quo. Intellectual property imperialism and institutionalized chicanery would be rejected as contravening the social utility objectives which underlie intellectual property protection. Moreover, the recognition of intellectual property social justice would not only preserve the interests of historically marginalized and developing nation innovators and creators, it would incentivize their full participation in systemic intellectual property endeavor.11

Social Action

Equally important to the realization of Intellectual Property Empowerment is the adoption of a progressive intellectual property social action platform. Whereas the recognition of social justice obligations in intellectual property law will enhance protection for the rights and interests of historically marginalized groups and developing nations, a correlative social action strategy is necessary to provide intellectual property education and to stimulate primordial intellectual property activity, particularly entrepreneurial intellectual property endeavor, within these communities. Through organized and entrepreneurial-minded “IP social activism”, legal and entrepreneurial experts can collaborate with social activists and policy makers to open new avenues for economic empowerment, political self-determination and socio-cultural progress for communities and nations in need.

In constructing an Intellectual Property Empowerment social action platform, IP social activists might look to the American Civil Rights Movement, arguably the most effective socio-legal movement in modern history.12 Whereas many of the social inequities of the Civil Rights Era were grounded in socially pernicious laws and public policies, in the information society, some of the most pressing social inequities and injustices are tied to the intellectual property legal and economic infrastructure. Inequitable access to information and knowledge and various technological and pharmaceutical innovations can all be linked in part to socially indifferent and exploitative intellectual property mores. Intellectual property is therefore the contemporary analogue to the social/ legal equality agenda of the Civil Rights Era. The key intersection between the Civil Rights Movement and Intellectual Property Empowerment, however, is that Intellectual Property Empowerment provides a Civil and Human Rights Economic Agenda for the 21st Century, through which the unfinished economic business of the Civil Rights Movement can be pursued. Although the Civil Rights Movement achieved tremendous legal and social progress, it’s the absence of a concrete economic agenda which left many historically marginalized groups and developing nations trapped in a state of economic subjugation and stagnation.13 These strategic links between the Civil Rights Movement and Intellectual Property Empowerment compel a comparative assessment of the history, legal foundation and social action framework of the Civil Rights Movement, toward the implementation of Intellectual Property Empowerment as a socio-economic movement.