This document discusses applying feminist epistemology to intellectual property law. It proposes four visions that could emerge from this: (1) eliminating IP laws altogether; (2) eliminating royalties but keeping the laws; (3) allowing communal and feelings-based knowledge to be protected; and (4) ensuring equal representation of women as IP owners. These visions aim to deconstruct notions of ownership, challenge why IP laws exist, expand what counts as knowledge, and address underrepresentation of women in IP. The document explores each vision in more detail and concludes by questioning how representation alone fulfills a feminist perspective.

1. Feminist Epistemology and
Intellectual Property: Imagining
Feminist Intellectual Property
Tatum Lindsay
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014

2. GoldieBlox
• GoldieBlox + Beastie Boys + Fair Use
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014

3. The Beginning
• Doing “selfish” research
• From experience to inquiry
• From inquiry to “imagining a feminist vision of
intellectual property law”
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014

4. Methods
• Halberstam, Judith J. Female Masculinity,
Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. 9-12.
Print.
• “’Queer methodology’ responds to various
locations of information…and betrays a certain
disloyalty to conventional disciplinary
methods.”
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014

5. Definitions
• Intellectual Property
• Feminist Epistemology
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014

6. What justification do you have?
“Feminist epistemology seeks to provide ways of
creating new possibilities and new realities –
they seek to answer not with a simple defined
answer, but with more, perhaps better
questions.”
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014

7. Feminist Epistemology + IP
“A feminist theoretical frameworks deeply
challenges intellectual property regulations and
laws. Mobilizing feminist epistemologies
alongside intellectual property laws permits
serious investigation of current conceptions of
the American legal tradition, and, more
specifically, concepts of ownership and property
rights.”
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014

8. The Good Stuff
“By using feminist epistemological tools and perspectives to
discuss the challenges and rewards of applying a feminist
critique of intellectual property, I will propose four new possible
fields of vision…
(1) an elimination of intellectual property laws altogether,
(2) a set of intellectual property laws that will eliminate royalties
and specific protections to individuals, but not the law itself,
(3) an ideological shift in the law that would allow communal
and feelings-based knowledges to be afforded equal protections,
and
(4) a quota system that would ensure that women are equally
represented as owners of intellectual property in the world.”
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014

9. (1)
“Feminists should be interested in considering
this option because it is a solution that
completely and directly deconstructs the notion
that things that come out of your mind (ideas)
are things to be, regulated, protected, bought,
disputed, and commoditized. By privileging no
one’s intellectual property, we privilege all
‘intellectual property’.”
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014

10. (2)
“Eliminating royalties and specific protections to
individuals totally deconstructs and challenges why
intellectual property laws exist. The reason for
eliminating royalties gained from registered works
is to redefine the participation in a system that
traditionally privileges a masculine interpretation of
global economics: capitalism.
Intellectual property laws seek to stimulate a robust
capitalistic free-market by providing a rich and
competitive marketplace.”
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014

11. (3)
“Provisions in the law do exist to allow groups to have
joint-authorship, but this kind of provision is not the kind
of protection that a feminist epistemological framework
would seek out.
Patricia Hill Collins, an inspirer behind feminist standpoint
epistemology, proposed that actual lived experience is a
site of knowledge production. To expand on her initial
vision of this, one could imagine a world in which
feelings, traumas, biographies, oral histories, and even
dinner parties are considered valid sites of knowledge
production.”
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014

12. (4)
Women in particular have made significant
advances in the field recently, but are still
underrepresented as registrants. More
importantly, why is this important?
The nomination of Michelle K. Lee to Deputy
Director of the United States Patent and
Trademark Office is a step in the right direction,
but is representation in leadership the only way
to fulfill this feminist fantasy?
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014

13. Conclusion and Questions
© Tatum Lindsay, 2014