A History of Intellectual Property in 50 Objects

What do the Mona Lisa, the light bulb, and a Lego brick have in common? The answer - intellectual property (IP) - may be surprising, because IP laws are all about us, but go mostly unrecognized. They are complicated and arcane, and few people understand why they should care about copyright, patents, and trademarks. In this lustrous collection, Claudy Op den Kamp and Dan Hunter have brought together a group of contributors - drawn from around the globe in fields including law, history, sociology, science and technology, media, and even horticulture - to tell a history of IP in 50 objects. These objects not only demonstrate the significance of the IP system, but also show how IP has developed and how it has influenced history. Each object is at the core of a story that will be appreciated by anyone interested in how great innovations offer a unique window into our past, present, and future.

Claudy Op den Kamp is Senior Lecturer in Film and faculty member at the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM) at Bournemouth University and Adjunct Research Fellow at Swinburne Law School, Australia. She has previously worked as Haghefilm Conservation's Account Manager, as a Film Restoration Project Leader at the Nederlands Filmmuseum, and as a senior research assistant in the film restoration research project DIASTOR at the Department of Film Studies at the Universität Zürich. Her monograph, The Greatest Films Never Seen: The Film Archive and the Copyright Smokescreen, was published in 2017.

Dan Hunter is the founding dean of Swinburne Law School, Australia. He is an international expert in internet law, intellectual property, and artificial intelligence models of law. He has previously held positions at QUT Law School, New York Law School, Melbourne Law School, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and University of Cambridge. He is author of Intellectual Property (2012) and co-author of For The Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business (2012).