Legal battles over intellectual property often pit giant corporations against one another in multi-million dollar lawsuits. What can a philosopher hope to add?
Quite a bit, according to Andrew Stark, a professor of management at UTSC. The recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Award, Stark is spending an academic year at Columbia University conducting research for a new book, A Theory of Intellectual Property in America, which examines the contentious legal battles in the U.S. over patents and copyright through the lens of philosophy.
“If you look at how the legal community talks about intellectual property, they say the law is a mess,” says Stark. “That’s true if you look at the issue through a legal lens. If you use categories drawn from philosophy, you start to achieve some clarity.”