The IPR regime is multifaceted - Corporations and Nations work harmoniously to regulate private intellectual property to ensure the material products of capitalism are hoarded within these elite configurations of power

A crucial piece of legislation which helped pave the way towards (almost) total control of private capital over knowledge was the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. US Senator Birch Bayh proposed the preposterous contention that a robust patent system was a prerequisite to secure US-American advantage over competitors by enabling private agents to appropriate “patents in inventions” which were “developed with federal funds” (Drahos & Braithwaite, 2002, p. 163). According to Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite, before this act, publicly funded patents in inventions would go “into the public domain by means of publication” (Drahos & Braithwaite, 2002, p. 163). Bryn Williams-Jones and Vural Ozdemir suggest a rupture in which universities and researchers, on the one hand, and education and athletics, on the other, were constrained to entangle themselves with private capital (Williams-Jones & Ozdemir, 2007, p. 140). Niklas Bruun correctly asserts that this is based on a paradoxical relationship in which universities ought to simultaneously produce long-term open basic research and short-term knowledge to be commercialised and enclosed (Bruun, 2021, p. 9). Knowledge would then be subjected to rivalry (Pellizzoni & Ylönen, 2012, p. 55f), which on an abstract idealised level does not exist.

The culmination of this process, which still impacts most people on a worldwide scale, was the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS). Gigantic blocs of capital—big pharma, big tech, and showbiz—not only strongly supported it but also played a vital role in its inception and transnational enforcement. Nevertheless, according to Luigi Pellizzoni and Marja Ylönen, “TRIPs [sic] extended the scope of patentability to all commercially exploitable products and processes, including genetically modified plants and animals” (Pellizzoni & Ylönen, 2012, p. 56). As every piece of written information became copyrighted, the expansion of digitalisation simultaneously meant making intellectual property(private) ubiquitous because all social interactions digitally mediated by writing were now part of the intellectual property system. A further paradox arose. While information could be accessed like never before without the then current constraints of space and time, the “proliferation of intellectual property rights inhibits access to such information in areas (basic research in general, the life sciences, software)”, which were mostly part of the so-called public domain (David & Foray, 2002, p. 13). Accessible knowledge meant it would have to be situated outside capitalist markets, consequently constraining profit (Nelson, 2003, p. 1701). Knowledge expropriation was absolutely pivotal in changing this dynamic. The loss of capitalist dynamism after the so-called Golden Age (after World War II) accelerated the need to impose control over knowledge as a necessary condition of production (Sum & Jessop, 2013, p. 292).

The strategy to secure hegemonic control over knowledge did not fundamentally change; the novelty was the new tactics. While governments and universities were already vastly entangled with capital (Conner, 2005, p. 472f), the expansion and universalisation of intellectual property gave capital a tighter grip on knowledge which could endure a greater separation/autonomy within the productive process, enabling an even greater division of labour. “Designed in California, made in China” is one of the many examples in which knowledge production and industrial production have been separated. As such, it required an extension of the powerful protection thus far reserved for the immediate private property of the means of production. On the other hand, producing novel knowledge and technology is an uncertain practice. It is uncertain when it is going to be accomplished and whether it is going to be successful, and how many resources it is going to take before it can yield the expected results. This unpredictable character renders private capital an unsuitable candidate for this endeavour. Instead, resources are drawn from society—usually by the capitalist state—enabling the so-called basic research (Hull, 2019, p. 31f).

TRIPS was clearly not an organic development of the forces of the so-called free-market. Instead, it “came about after the chief executive officers of Bristol-Myers, CBS, DuPont, General Electric, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Monsanto and Pfizer joined forces to form the Intellectual Property Committee (IPC)” (George, 2012, p. 45). It consolidates intellectual property rights in an international system (Sonderholm, 2012, p. 110). Yet, its greatest advocates were those countries that violated previous intellectual property agreements (Chang, 2001, p. 10).

By the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, DuPont played a major role in integrating scientific endeavour into capital. Patents became so crucial that it gave rise to the so-called profession of Patent Locksmith. Patent bureaucracy did not fall short of importance to inventions themselves. Knowledge control was imposed not only by isolated patents but also by what Drahos and Braithwaite call a “web of patents”, thus enabling great power to block competition (Drahos & Braithwaite, 2002, p. 46). The cartelisation of economies was—probably inadvertently—legalised by means of the universalisation of the patent system.

Almost a century later, TRIPS came about and was integrated into the World Trade Organization (WTO). However, it emerged from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). At first, it seemed an incongruity because the GATT “related to goods crossing borders, not knowledge” (Drahos & Braithwaite, 2002, p. 68); however, the private companies involved—see supra—, headed by Pfizer, promoted a plan to actualise TRIPS. Pfizer sponsored a crusade to behavioural-perception change, “linking the trade regime to investment” (Drahos & Braithwaite, 2002, p. 68). National strategies of investment were therefore encumbered. The strategy imposed over the world was relatively simple: if US-American conditions of intellectual property were not met, trade would be blocked. According to Drahos and Braithwaite, “less than 50 individuals had managed to globalise a set of regulatory norms for the conduct of all those doing business or aspiring to do business in the information age” (Drahos & Braithwaite, 2002, p. 73). This imposition was a spectacular feat and an impressive display of capitalist power. Only fifty people were responsible for how the entire world would come to terms with intellectual property under TRIPS.