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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2011

Theory, Knowledge and Science

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Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Primitive Accumulation And Enclosure Of The Commons: Genetically Engineered Seeds And Canadian Jurisprudence, Wilhelm Peekhaus Oct 2011

Primitive Accumulation And Enclosure Of The Commons: Genetically Engineered Seeds And Canadian Jurisprudence, Wilhelm Peekhaus

Wilhelm Peekhaus

This paper juxtaposes the legal decisions made in the case of Percy Schmeiser, who was sued by Monsanto for patent infringement, against the attempt by the Organic Agriculture Protection Fund to obtain class certification in its efforts to sue Monsanto and Bayer for genetic contamination of organic canola. Together these two cases establish an unacceptable incongruity at common law between the rights enjoyed by intellectual property owners and any corresponding duties that might attach to their inventions. I suggest that Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation offers a suitable theoretical register for apprehending contemporary erosions of the commons through the enclosure …


Knowledge Curation, Michael J. Madison Jan 2011

Knowledge Curation, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This Article addresses conservation, preservation, and stewardship of knowledge, and laws and institutions in the cultural environment that support those things. Legal and policy questions concerning creativity and innovation usually focus on producing new knowledge and offering access to it. Equivalent attention rarely is paid to questions of old knowledge. To what extent should the law, and particularly intellectual property law, focus on the durability of information and knowledge? To what extent does the law do so already, and to what effect? This article begins to explore those questions. Along the way, the article takes up distinctions among different types …