The juridical construction of intellectual property: from privilege to property

Abstract

Intellectual property is a legal figure whose existence and configuration has not been called into question until a few years ago, especially as a result of certain technological changes, such as the expansion of computers and the internet. In spite of this, it is a legal institution that has an important weight of acceptance in the collective imagination in our societies. The present work tries to show that its origin, far from being in the protection of the authors or the diffusion of their intelectual works, coincides with the appearance of the liberal notion of the private property. This historic origin configured the characteristic features of an institution that was inserted in an increasingly widespread capitalism, and explains the gradual commodification of cultural goods throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was, in fact, an achievement of the booming bourgeoisie to control with the new concept of private property what until then had been considered a monarchical privilege.