Trademarks are an example of biopolitics through its use of branding of consumer goods in order to control the consumer and the capitalist markets
Hull ’19 (Gordon, is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He has published numerous articles on contemporary philosophical and political theory, intellectual property, privacy, and the history of philosophy. He is also the author of Hobbes and the Making of Modern Political Thought (2009), “The Biopolitics of Intellectual Property: Regulating Innovation and Personhood in the Information Age”, pg. 128-129 //nw-avis)
Although law and the judicial system can impose limits on the extent and power of branding culture, I will argue here that those limits are not without cost to those who might seek to impose them, or who might be seen as most obviously to benefit from them. Brands directly affect the bios of different communities insofar as they necessarily interact with local geographies, with effects on producers, consumers, and regulatory processes; in essence, as Andrew Pike notes, “branding seeks to destabilize existing markets and reinstitutionalize them around new, strategically calculated produce and service brand definitions” (Pike, 2009, p. 633). Geographical associations are an integral part of branding strategies. As Pike argues, brand owners engage in a strategy of selectively “playing up certain desirable and valued meanings – such as the heritage, quality and reputation connoted by particular places (e.g., Milanese design or Thai silks)” while downplaying negative associations (2013, p. 323). As Pike emphasizes, this process necessarily has distributive effects, as for example, geographies that are perceived as high value are able to monetize that consumer perception.
Consumers assign value to products based on their place of origin, and Western companies frequently attempt to profit by association with the “traditional” products and methods of non-Western cultures and places. In Western countries, IP law – particularly trademark, since it is concerned with the naming and branding of goods – has traditionally been invoked to keep freeloaders away from the goodwill accreted to a brand. Could a similar strategy help the producers of traditional products? The logic is clear enough. Global consumers demand “Coke,” and they are rewarded with the product of one, specific corporation. If global consumers are going to demand “Darjeeling” tea, then it only seems just that they should get something from India, and not from Benetton. Indeed, such global standards seem to be needed to stop Western companies exploiting indigenous products for their own profit. In one famous example of such “biopiracy,” the Texas company RiceTec imported basmati rice from India and sought patent protection for it; it took a lengthy battle and global pushback to prevent RiceTec from calling its products “basmati” (Boyle, 1997; Shiva, 1999).