Sponsored by the Office for History of Science and Technology (UC Berkeley)
And the History of Health Sciences Program (UCSF)
Adrian Johns
University of Chicago
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When All Intellectual Property was Theft: The Nineteenth-Century Assault on Patenting and Copyright
We are all familiar with the loud and bitter conflicts over intellectual property that command attention in today's realms of digital media and biotechnology. Because these are proclaimed to be revolutionary fields, we often assume that the conflicts themselves are unprecedented. This is false. In fact, they inherit concepts, convictions, and arguments from a nineteenth-century crisis of patenting and copyright that was at least as profound as our own, and that took place at an equally pivotal moment in the history of the sciences. I aim to restore this prior crisis to the place that it warrants in our historical perceptions. Rival conceptions of science, industry, and imperialism were at stake in deciding its outcome. And when it came to an end, it left behind it the concept of intellectual property that has continued to prevail until our own day.
4:00PM
Monday, November 6, 2006
370 Dwinelle Hall -- note different location!
UC Berkeley
Co-Sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology,
The Science, Technology, and Society Center,
And the Center for British Studies
Office for History of Science and Technology, 543 Stephens Hall #2350
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2350
tel: (510) 642-4581, e-mail: ohst@berkeley.edu
