ABSTRACT
Property and intellectual property are creatures of western legal modernity, fundamentally and historically shaped by the liberal ideology of possessive individualism. At the core of property, and intellectual property, is the right to exclude others from using the resource. Yet, property is a plastic instrument that can be strategically used to share a resource and include others. In intellectual property particularly, there are several cases where the right has been exercised to organize and imagine a more inclusive production process and use entitlements (eg, open collaborative creation, copyleft licensing, traditional knowledge and cultural expressions, public domain).
In the overall storytelling of (intellectual) property, such cases are seen as oddities or exceptions to the rule of exclusivity. I propose to add a story in that narrative around a new notion of inclusivity and inclusive properties to designate those situations where several people share the use of a resource without the possibility of totally excluding others. Rather than speaking of non-exclusive properties, the term ‘inclusive’ denotes a positive approach: communality of use and non-exclusion is not a lack, a defect, but a fullness. It is not the absence of exclusion that defines it, but the presence of inclusion, the flip side of exclusivity. Adding inclusive properties to the monolithic model of exclusive property enables some deconstruction of that paradigm and rhetoric, and its consequences (namely, its extractive and individualistic norms), as well as a transformation of intellectual property from a technique of commodification to an experiment of alternative exercise of rights, and collective practices of creation and innovation, of community-building and belonging. Instead of looking at intellectual property as a market device, it could highlight its diversity as a mode of participation to a cultural sphere.
Dusollier, Severine, Inclusive (Intellectual) Properties (January 1, 2025).
Leave a Reply