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Patents, Biopolitics, and Feminisms: Locating Patent Law Struggles over Breast Cancer Genes and the Hoodia Plant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2012

Laura A. Foster
Laura A. Foster*
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Gender Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington; Faculty Affiliate, Center for Intellectual Property Research, Indiana University Maurer School of Law. Email: fosterl@indiana.edu
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Abstract

This article suggests three critical inquiries for formulating a feminist analysis of patent law. The first questions how patent law functions as a strategy within neoliberal, biopolitics. The second examines how patent law is structured through biopolitical techniques of governance by examining two conceptions of the public domain I call open public domain and protective public domain. The third inquiry, drawing upon feminist science studies, asks how women's reproductive and intellectual labor are valued and devalued in various different ways through new patent law technologies. In addition, two recent patent law are struggles are examined. These include an American Civil Liberties Union case against the patenting of breast cancer gene sequences and Southern African San struggles against patents related to the Hoodia gordonii plant. In conclusion, I argue that patent law functions within gendered and ethno-racialized forms of neoliberal, biopolitics involving the patenting of women's reproductive and intellectual labor within new bioeconomics.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Cultural Property , Volume 19 , Special Issue 3: Intangible Property at the Periphery: Expanding Enclosure in the 21st Century , August 2012 , pp. 371 - 400
Copyright
Copyright © International Cultural Property Society 2012

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