Putting Intellectual Property in its Place: Rights Discourses, Creative Labor, and the Everyday

Putting Intellectual Property in its Place examines the relationship between creativity and intellectual property law on the premise that, despite concentrated critical attention devoted to IP law from academic, policy and activist quarters, its role as a determinant of creative activity is overstated. The effects of IP rights or law are usually more unpredictable, non-linear, or illusory than is often presumed. Through a series of case studies focusing on nineteenth century journalism, "fake" art, plant hormone research between the wars, online knitting communities, creativity in small cities, and legal practice, the authors discuss the many ways people comprehend the law through information and opinions gathered from friends, strangers, coworkers, and the media. They also show how people choose to share, create, negotiate, and dispute based on what seems fair, just, or necessary, in the context of how their community functions in that moment, while ignoring or reimagining legal mechanisms. In this book authors Murray, Piper, and Robertson define "the everyday life of IP law", constituting an experiment in non-normative legal scholarship, and in building theory from material and located practice.

Table of Contents:
Contents Acknowledgments Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Copyright Over the Boarder: Freedom, Commons, Appropriation Chapter 3: No One Would Murder for a Pattern: Crafting IP in Online Knitting Communities Chapter 4: Growing a Patent Culture: Plant Hormones Research and the National Research Council Chapter 5: Exchange Practices Among Nineteenth-century US Newspaper Editors: Cooperation in Competition Chapter 6: Copying and the Case of the Legal Profession Chapter 7: Cultural Labor in a Small City: Motivations, Rewards, and Social Dynamics Chapter 8: The Art of the Copy: Labor, Originality, and Value in the Contemporary Art Market Afterword Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Laura J. Murray is Associate Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Queen's University. Her work in Indigenous Studies and American Literary History informs her work on copyright law. With Samuel E. Trosow, she is author of Canadian Copyright: A Citizen's Guide (2007, 2013). S. Tina Piper is Assistant Professor of Law at McGill University. Her doctoral dissertation at the University of Oxford explored the relationship between the professionalization of U.K. physicians and their Intellectual Property practices. She has also published on IP practices in the Canadian military, and on how present-day independent music labels in Montreal use and avoid IP law. Kirsty Robertson is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art and Museum Studies in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Western Ontario. Her research focuses on activism, visual culture, and changing economies. Her co-edited volume Imagining Resistance: Visual Culture and Activism in Canada was released in 2011.

Review :
"This book feels like an important milestone in the study of IP, art and science. It is both a study and example of the richness of intellectual work and works that smartly situate the role of law in shaping both." -Jessica Silbey, Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School, Intellectual Property Journal "This book is an interdisciplinary effort by three Canadian scholars... The combination of [their] backgrounds means that the book is accessible to a wide reach of readers, all the more so for its use of contemporary, unique and accessible case studies." -Emma Linklater, European Journal of Legal Studies "The book is a genuine attempt to engage with the legal, social, and anthropological logic of intellectual property law." -Luke McDonagh, The IP Law Book Review