The alternative integrating feminist perspectives into policy action---feminist interpretations of property remove the underlying social structures.

I have attempted to investigate the multiple ways feminist perspectives might be applied to intellectual property. Women who identify with feminist thought may take any number of positions on the issue of intellectual property, from endorsing a system that protects the authorial autonomy of women, or, by contrast, offering a critique of the underlying assumptions of a property discourse founded on a masculine construction of knowledge. While work has been done on the history of authorship and the ways women were either ignored and/or used to define the boundaries of literary texts, much less has been done on the contemporary state of authorship from a feminist perspective. Additionally, there is a need for a more direct feminist interpretation of the growing case law on copyright, patents and trademarks.156

Feminism can provide a study of intellectual property with both a different viewpoint on the law and a method for articulating a different process. The alternatives grow from the case examples of women’s creativity—quilting, knitting and feminist publishing to name a few. These examples suggest that whether “natural” to women or not, a different relationship to creative work can be articulated from a feminist perspective. This is an approach that recognizes collaboration as much as individual contributions, recognizes that the author (of a quilt, dress or book) and the reader/user form an important relationship often based upon mutual respect, recognition, and care, and that there is no need to construct a definition of literature or “high art” premised upon reactive boundaries that declare what good work is not—the work of women. A feminist perspective works at the foundation of the legal system by changing the assumptions upon which much of the law is based. Thus, there would ultimately have to be changes in the law that would reflect changes in the underlying social structure.

The ultimate threat posed by the system of intellectual property, as currently conceptualized, is that it may further erode the values that can still be found in the types of creative endeavors that women produce. We can hope that by understanding the alternatives a feminist interpretation makes available, at least some creative people will be provided with a cultural space where creation is about more than property rights. Of course, a structural critique must be tempered by the fact that numerous women have turned the traditional system of intellectual property to their benefit. In the end, much as in the beginning, it is difficult to see a single feminist interpretation applying here. However, the many different interpretations create a more complex and richer dialogue on intellectual property, one that seems important to continue.