The Silent Peacemaker: Intellectual Property Rights and the Interwar International Legal Order, 1919–1939

Book excerpt: This collection of essays explores the role intellectual property played in the interwar period and the expansion and protection of intellectual property rights. The geographical scope of the book is global so as to give perspectives from different regions on how intellectual property law developed. The topics covered range from a synopsis of intellectual property in Jewish works confiscated by the Nazis to how intellectual property can be understood as part of the evolution of inventors’ moral rights. This volume’s aim is to develop new narratives on the ideas and structures of intellectual property during the interwar period and on how those ideas and structures were held together by the competing forces of markets, ownership and political ideals of the international legal order at that time. Contributors are: Michael Blakeney, Enrico Bonadio, Patricia Covarrubia, Christine Haight Farley, Laura Ford, Giacomo Gabbuti, Johanna Gibson, Phillip Johnson, Ekaterina Kirsanova, Anat Lior, P. Sean Morris, Alessandro Nuvolari, Emmanuel Oke, Véronique Pouillard, Akshita Rohatgi, Anele Simon, Caterina Sganga, Noppanun Supasiripongchai, Masabumi Suzuki, and Lior Zemer.