IPR grants owners exclusive monopoly over a products’ functionality, leading to profit maximization through planned obsolescence. Means their claimed future positive innovations will be designed to maintain market domination and financial gain rather than genuine advancement.

The stories of obsolescence, planned or programmed, are inhabited by beliefs and collective narratives about technology. The dominant theme running through the chapters is that technology and its owners confiscate control over the use of a product, expropriating or reducing the capacity of the user to exercise command over it. Obsolescence becomes the diabolus ex machina. Technological objects make it difficult, if not impossible, for users to understand and repair their goods. Manufacturers of these products are in a position to program the use, the performance and the obsolescence of the goods, a power that they can use to trigger further consumption. In Veblen's account of the emergence of the industrial civilization, technology changes the nature of socio-economic relationships between actors of the industry. Owners of the means of production become the de facto usufructuary and first beneficiary of the technical knowledge. The knowledge once held by the community of craftsmen is concealed in the machine made by engineers who are hired by investors. In Veblen's words, "[t]he possession of the material equipment, therefore, placed in the discretion of its owners the utilisation of such technological knowledge and skill as the members of the given crafts might possess. The usufruct of the handicraft community's technological proficiency in this way came to vest in the owners of the plant". 2 Innovation processes are thereby internalized and the automated functions of machines make the worker's involvement and skills dispensable. Technical knowledge is bought and reserved for competitive advantages. It is used to design products in accordance with the specifications that the manufacturer sees fit with an eye for maximizing profits. This is perhaps the lesson of our investigation: the narratives of obsolescence omit to take into account how law, and in particular intellectual property law, grants power to owners of production means over the functionality of a product. After all, patents can be filed and obtained on improvements without being used. The GE case is indeed as much a case of unexploited innovation as it is one of monopolistic power. The technology for better and more durable lamps was available and patented, but it was more expensive to manufacture. More than an obsolescence story, the light bulb affair is a patent story. Through this prism, patent law is a perfectly legitimate retention mechanism. Indeed, some inventions will never be commercialized, however useful, socially or ecologically beneficial they may be. In the same way, copyright and trade secrets become strategies to prevent reverse engineering and are key instruments to control access to codes and algorithmic transparency. Settlements were an opportunity for Apple to escape intrusive evidentiary investigations into its internal operations. It is significant that Veblen himself, not a lawyer, became aware of the danger posed by intellectual property for the development of industrial society. On rare occasions, he shared his concerns on the nature of these new forms of property. In 1914, he wrote:

"[i]n more advanced state of industrial arts, where ownership and the specialization of industry have had their effect, trade secrets, patent and copyrights are often of substantial value, and these are held in segregation from the common stock of technology." 225 In 1919, he explicitly compared intellectual property to classical forms of monopolies such as conspiracy or the combination of ownership. Intangible property, he wrote, "represents a "conscientious withdrawal of efficiency," an effectual control of the rate or volume of output." 22 6

At the end of our journey, we are left with the impression that obsolescence sits uneasily with the current prescriptions of the law. It has not been fully characterized as a tort or as a crime. Its current regulation, often short of evidence, is rather limited and indirectly addresses the issue by upholding the obligations incumbent on manufacturers to inform consumers. There are reasons for these hesitations. After all, programmed obsolescence puts capitalism on trial. Modern law, being a creature of the capitalist system and author of the long-standing institutions of contract and property, cannot easily, without great risk of internal conflict, endorse liberal and transformative values while, at the same time, vehemently condemn its natural offspring.