About ISHTIP
The International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP) will support scholarly investigation not only of the national histories of patent, copyright, and "related" rights; but equally of the diverse "roads not taken" in the evolution of these legal structures; of contemporary countertrends; and of the laws and norms that have been devised in non European cultures around the world to manage intellectual production and exchange.
The Society will be launched on March 20, 2008 at a conference on copyright history to be held in London. The work of launching the Society is being carried out by a group of legal and literary scholars, cultural historians, and historians of science from the U.S., Australia, and diverse countries of the EU. It will have an international governing board and administrative headquarters that will circulate internationally with the executive director, whose university may be expected to partially subsidize the Society during his/her tenure.
To accomplish our aims we plan
- to create and maintain a website with sufficient functionality to support the posting and discussion of work in progress, a searchable digital library of documents in the histories of IP, bibliographies, reviews of new publications of interest, course syllabi and other resources;
- to mount a biennial international conference (from which a volume of selected papers will be published electronically)
- to sponsor in alternate years member-initiated workshops devoted to specific "problems" in IP; and
- once the Society has taken root, to establish a peer-reviewed open-access digital journal.
By thus working to promote, coordinate, and disseminate critical inquiry into IP, the Society aims to re-frame – to broaden and deepen – current IP debate. Although contemporary mechanisms for regulating the production and use of information are geared around globalized legal IP norms, historical, ethnographic and related research reveals a wide and diverse range of precursors and alternatives to such proprietary norms. Research over the last decades indicates the huge potential for further investigation of these other experiences (as well as the enormous gaps that exist in our understanding of the historical construction and operation of the proprietary norms that now dominate the information field). Scholarly work that seeks to disclose, articulate and evaluate the experiences of alternative practices can provide important conceptual tools for those working on the critical problems facing information regulation today. While recent years have seen a rapid growth in the number of sophisticated researchers interested in these matters, they tend to be dispersed across academic departments and schools, government, NGOs, and the private sector. Some mechanism to foster communication among them is greatly needed. The society we are developing aims to serve this function.
Most of the work of establishing and operating ISHTIP will be carried out by members volunteering their time and expertise. Once the Society is established we anticipate that membership fees will begin to cover much of the cost of administration and that many of our remaining needs will be met by the universities at which the Society will be headquartered — i.e., the home institutions of those scholars who accept a term as executive director.
ISHTIP is now in formation. Interested scholars are invited to become charter members and help shape the future of the organization. If you are interested in joining, or would like to know more, please return the membership information form.