Patents as Public Disengagement

Patents as Public Disengagement

Stephen Hilgartner

Cornell University

Foro-Taller ASCTI, October 2010 1

• Public Engagement Mechanisms– as devices for giving voice or opening channels for

(pre-existing) citizens, publics to speak and act– As devices that constitute citizens with enhanced

capacities of speech and action

– Lots of work:• Public engagement exercises• Journal articles on how to do them• Journal articles questioning what they accomplish• Alan Irwin’s (xxxx) critique won a best article prize from

the Society for Social Studies of Science• 25K Google hits on “public engagement mechanisms”


• Little work on Public Disengagement Mechanisms– Not a category: 2 Google hits

• Research on public disengagement mechanisms would:– Not naturalize citizen, public

disengagement– Examine how citizens, publics with limited

voice and capacity for action are constituted

– Integrate study of PEM and PDM


Patent System as a Public Disengagement Mechanism

• Contrast two policy discourses– Innovation discourse– Politics-of-technology discourse

• A policy discourse: – an organized assemblage of concepts,

categories, frames, metaphors, and narratives that gives definition and structure to a domain of policy making


Innovation Discourse

• Discursive starting point:

– A narrative that frames innovation as a social good, inventor as hero, free rider as villain, limited property rights as solution, society as beneficiary



• Central questions:

– What constitutes a patentable invention? What counts as infringement? How should novelty be codified? What way of structuring IP rights will maximize innovation?



metric of success = stimulating innovation


Politics of Technology Discourse

• Discursive starting point:

– Given the awesome power of modern technologies, decisions about emerging technologies are decisions about the future shape of societies. This situation poses deep problems for democratic states.


Politics of Technology Discourse

• Central questions:– Do patents at times limit the ability of

publics to exercise voice and choice in these negotiations?

– More deeply, what forms of citizenship do various intellectual property regimes constitute? What kinds of democratic representation do they tend to support?


Comparing the Perspectives

• Visions of technological change




• Market power or configuration power





• Transparent or opaque






• The inventor or the citizen






• The inventor or the citizen

• Efficient innovation or adequate representation


Innovation Politics of Technology

Normative Focus Technological progress

Democratic choice

Central Figure The inventor The citizen

Emerging Technology

As a source of economic growth

As politically neutral

As a means of (re)ordering social and technical worlds

As a contested domain

Stakes Economic Shape of sociotechnical systems

Domain of Policymaking

R&D policy “Constitutional” questions

Form of Power Emphasized

Market power Configuration power

Effect on Transparency

Open publication of patent itself

Opaque decision making pre- and post- issue of patent

Vision of Successful Policy

Economic efficiency Adequate representation

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Lessons

• For Intellectual Property debate– Independent argument for IP minimalism– Argument for open source innovation

• For Public Engagement– Importance of attending not just to new add-on

mechanisms of engaging but also to institutional structures that constitute publics as disengaged


Patents as Public Disengagement

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