Constructing Intellectual Property

Dr Alexandra George joined the University of New South Wales Law Faculty in 2007, having had earlier academic appointments at Queen Mary, University of London, the University of Wales, Swansea and the University of Exeter in the UK. She has also worked at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy and at the University of Sydney, has practised as an intellectual property and media lawyer, was Associate to Justice M. F. Moore in the Federal Court of Australia and the Industrial Relations Court of Australia, and worked in journalism at Reuters. Dr George's research focuses on the philosophy of intellectual property law, particularly with respect to the notion of 'property' in intangible objects and the communicative effects of trade mark and copyright law. Her publications examine issues such as commodification and intellectual propertisation, the role of intellectual property in the globalisation process, hot issues in intellectual property (such as access to essential medicines, ownership of the genome, and bioprospecting/biopiracy), and practical problems of intellectual property enforcement.

'Social scientists should find the book methodologically meticulous and appreciate that the author clearly explicates a formidable range of philosophical theory (rejecting a common tendency to exalt its cabalism). The examples are imaginative and varied, and her opening of the book with the fairy tale of the Emperor's New Clothes primes the reader's will for analyzing IP as an institutional fact. The book is an excellent inquiry into the role of jurisprudential discourse in producing IP as a coherent institution that maintains and reproduces itself.' Julia Tomassetti, Sociologica

• 1. Introduction; 2. The difficulty of defining 'intellectual property'; 3. The metaphysics of intellectual property; 4. Intellectual property's core criteria; 5. 'Family resemblance' and intellectual property; 6. Concluding remarks.