The Spectre of the Machine: Finding Space for Empirical Inventions in Patent Law
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Brad Sherman
Professor Brad Sherman is an ARC laureate fellow at the University of Queensland and a member of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology. He is currently working on the role that intellectual property law played in the creation, circulation and consumption of citrus in California and Arizona in the early twentieth century.
Abstract
The spectre of the machine and the mechanical jurisprudence that accompanies it have dominated patent law for over a century. This article offers three examples where we can see the influence of the figure of the machine in patent law: in the way the history of organic chemistry has been viewed, in the way that the law first interacted with biological inventions, and finally in the way that many commentators think about AI-machine generated inventions. I end by offering a different way of thinking about inventions that allows us to move beyond the spectre of the machine to give space for more speculative empirical inventions.
Funding source: ARC Laureate Fellowship; ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success; and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology.
About the author
Professor Brad Sherman is an ARC laureate fellow at the University of Queensland and a member of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology. He is currently working on the role that intellectual property law played in the creation, circulation and consumption of citrus in California and Arizona in the early twentieth century.
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Research funding: This work was funded by ARC Laureate Fellowship; ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Success; and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology.
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Introduction to the ‘The Spectral Nature of Intellectual Property’ Pólemos
- Focus
- The Spectre of the Machine: Finding Space for Empirical Inventions in Patent Law
- Copyright, Ghosts, Information
- Impossible Realities and Intellectual Property: Specters of Value in Amie Siegel’s Provenance
- The Emergence of Yoga-as-Property in American Law: The Haunting Presence of Commercial Logics from Swami Vivekananda to Bikram’s Hot Yoga
- Spectres of Intellectual Property in the Soviet Union: The Development and Recognition of the Inventor’s Certificate
- “A Name Which to Them is Sacred”: Quakers and Religious Trademarks in American Enterprise
- Schrödinger’s Rose: Indeterminacy and Contingent Futures in the Plant Variety Rights System of Aotearoa New Zealand
- Non-singular Logics of Intellectual Property in Biomedical Innovation
- Spectral Shadows in Scientific Practice: Unveiling the Haunting Effects of Authorship and Scientific Capital Accumulation
- Research
- Domination and Submission. From the Idea of ‘Legal Personality’ Back to the Metaphor of the ‘Mask’
- “The Whore That Lost Everything”: The Tyranny of Law and the Queer Feminisation of Soft Power as Explored in Black Sails
- Book Review
- Ian Ward: The Trials of Charles I
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Introduction to the ‘The Spectral Nature of Intellectual Property’ Pólemos
- Focus
- The Spectre of the Machine: Finding Space for Empirical Inventions in Patent Law
- Copyright, Ghosts, Information
- Impossible Realities and Intellectual Property: Specters of Value in Amie Siegel’s Provenance
- The Emergence of Yoga-as-Property in American Law: The Haunting Presence of Commercial Logics from Swami Vivekananda to Bikram’s Hot Yoga
- Spectres of Intellectual Property in the Soviet Union: The Development and Recognition of the Inventor’s Certificate
- “A Name Which to Them is Sacred”: Quakers and Religious Trademarks in American Enterprise
- Schrödinger’s Rose: Indeterminacy and Contingent Futures in the Plant Variety Rights System of Aotearoa New Zealand
- Non-singular Logics of Intellectual Property in Biomedical Innovation
- Spectral Shadows in Scientific Practice: Unveiling the Haunting Effects of Authorship and Scientific Capital Accumulation
- Research
- Domination and Submission. From the Idea of ‘Legal Personality’ Back to the Metaphor of the ‘Mask’
- “The Whore That Lost Everything”: The Tyranny of Law and the Queer Feminisation of Soft Power as Explored in Black Sails
- Book Review
- Ian Ward: The Trials of Charles I
