“Technologies of the law/ law as a technology”

Abstract

Historians of science and technology and STS practitioners have always taken intellectual property very seriously but, with some notable exceptions, they have typically refrained from looking “into” it. There is mounting evidence, however, that they can open up the black box of IP as effectively as they have done for the technosciences, enriching their discipline while making significant contributions to legal studies. One approach is to look at the technologies through which patent law construes its object – the invention – in specific settings and periods by examining procedures, classifications, archives, models, repositories, patent specifications (in both their linguistic and pictorial dimensions), and the highly specialized language of patent claims. More ambitiously, we could treat intellectual property as a technology itself. Patent law does not evolve either by merely articulating its doctrine in response to technological developments. The line between what does and does not count as invention may be redrawn with the emergence of new objects and technologies, but is not determined by them. It is this constructive feature of the law that we are trying to capture with the notion of law as technology. We hope that thinking about the technologies of the law and the law as technology will bring into question what we mean by both “technology” and “law”.

Making bio-objects mobile: behind the scenes of a translational stem cell banking consortium

“…As intimated above, bio-objectification occurs across multiple registers (Webster 2012). A bioobject may be rendered as a legal entity through enrolment in a particular regulatory classification (Metzler 2012) or scripted as a protected act of human invention through the claims made in a patent application (Biagioli and Buning 2019). Another aspect of identity may be configured through the bureaucratic register of institutionalized ethics.…”

After biosovereignty: The material transfer agreement as technology of relations

“…Here, a second legitimating framework, MTAs as biolegal commoning devices, emerges as MTAs become formalized and start to operate as legal technologies. Focusing on the PIP Framework and drawing from a robust scholarship on ownership and biomaterials in science and technology studies (STS) on the one hand (Birch & Tyfield, 2013;Hayden, 2003;Hoeyer, 2007;Lynch & McNally 2009;Mitchell & Waldby, 2006;Parry, 2004) and legal materiality on the other (Biagioli, 2012;Biagioli & Buning, 2019;Kang & Kendall, 2019;Lezaun, 2006Lezaun, , 2012Pottage, 2011;Van Wichelen & De Leeuw, 2022), I analyse the biolegality of MTAs and examine their reconfigurations in the making of the PIP Framework. The valuation processes inherent to this process, I argue, inform the stakes of 'commoning' in practices of transfer and exchange.…”