Biotechnology, Intellectual Property and the Invention of Nature: A Feminist Genealogy of US Patent and Copyright Law

Biotechnological techniques of gene-editing are founded on an understanding of organic matter coded as textually defined objects capable of being reconstructed according to the instructions of the code's inventor/author. Enabled through a textual conception of biological organisms, the roots of intellectual property rights over biotechnological control of life will be explored at the intersection of US intellectual property law of patents and copyright, and their synergistic construction of technological understandings of nature as a gendered female entity. The socio-legal construction of intellectual property will be viewed through feminist approaches to Science and Technology Studies, exploring associations of femininity with nature to critique the gendered logic of textuality inhering within the intellectual property paradigm of copy and reproduction, obscured once intellectual property has been established as a rational legal concept. With the highest concentration of biotechnology firms contesting intellectual property claims in the US and its key position within the global socioeconomic system, the shaping of US patent and copyright law will be examined in response to 19th century industrialisation and socioeconomic transformations, reflected in formative changes to intellectual property law structuring the regulatory architecture of modern biotechnology. Whilst there exist discrete historiographies of patent and copyright law, there is alack of research examining their interdependent development, further analysed through socio-legal linkages problematizing female (pro)creativity and nature. Using a methodology of critical legal historiography, the study will critique orthodoxies that sustain a legal regime purposed to innovate and advance scientific progress, whilst granting proprietary ownership over the rewards of human endeavours, enveloping technoscientific development, artistic creativity and commercial enterprise. The project will thus permit a revaluation of the contemporary praxis of intellectual property law, regulating biotechnology and beyond, critiquing rationalities that dictate property rights over human creation and recreation, and their substantive effects on nature, the human subject and society.