Globalizing Intellectual Property: Linkage and the Challenge of a Justice-Constituency
GLOBALIZING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: LINKAGE AND THE CHALLENGE OF A JUSTICE-CONSTITUENCY SAMUELK. MURUMBA* 1. INTRODUCTION There are historical moments in which invisible forces take a perfectly good idea and turn it into an ideology or even an idol. Such seems to be the case with intellectual property. Twenty years ago, intellectual property hardly existed as such. Its individ ual components-copyrights, patents, trademarks , etc.-had been around for a long time, of course, but they had not coalesced into anything comparable to the unified body of law we have today. Nor were they central to legal practice or significant to law school curriculum. Indeed, as recently as the beginning of the 1980s, de bate was still raging over the appropriate name to give to this emerging field ("industrial property" or "intellectual property") and over its precise boundaries. Almost overnight, however, in tellectual property has changed from a complex and generally eso teric body of law-the preserve of specialists in technology and entertainment law-to the stuff of folklore and conversation at cocktail parties, and for some, almost an object of worship. Intel lectual property now frequently appears in the company of such lofty notions as freedom and democracy, and has even been hailed as a more potent weapon than bombs and missiles for use against dictators!*'� * Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School; LL.B. (Honors) (Makerere Uni versity, Kampala); LL.M.; Ph.D. (Monash University, Melbourne, Australia). This paJ?er was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of InternatiOnal Law, International Economic Law Interest Group, Washington, D.C., December 5, 1997.
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