Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction by Siva Vaidhyanathan (review)

Siva Vaidhyanathan is best known for his writings in cultural criticism. Beginning his career as a journalist, he went on to earn degrees in history and in American studies before pursuing an academic career, first in the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University, then at the library schools of the University of Wisconsin and Columbia University, and finally in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, where he heads the Center for Media and Citizenship. He is often credited with being the pioneer of a new interdisciplinary field he has dubbed critical information studies that spans many fields including communication, computer science, cultural studies, ethnic studies, law, library science, political economy, and sociology.

Among the concerns of this emerging field is the relationship among information control, property rights, technologies, and social norms. His previous books have explored various dimensions of this relationship: Copyright and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity (2001); The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (2004); and The Googlization of Everything— and Why We Should Worry (2011).

This background made him an ideal choice to write an introduction to intellectual property (IP) because this economic/legal/political/social construct affects our lives and the culture in which we all participate in myriad ways, many of which people who are not IP experts do not realize and understand in their full ramifications. It takes a scholar of unusually broad vision and authorial skill to tackle such a complex subject in so short a space without obfuscating it or oversimplifying it. Siva Vaidhyanathan has succeeded in meeting this challenge admirably.

IP, of course, is not one set of legal doctrines but actually four: copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. Each is treated in one of the four main chapters of the book after a general introduction about 'why intellectual property matters more than you think,' the subtitle to the introduction. The four main chapters are more or less the right length, proportionately, for the impact that each type of legal regime has on most people's lives: twenty-four, twenty-seven, fourteen, and sixteen pages, respectively. (The sixteen pages, besides treating trade secrets, also cover domain names, designs, data protection, publicity rights, and proposed protection for traditional cultural expressions.)

Each chapter except the last, which deals with a miscellany of subjects, begins with an artfully chosen story that exemplifies the theme of the chapter in a concrete way. The introduction starts by asserting that Starbucks is 'just as much an intellectual property company as a foodand-beverage company' (3) that relies on all four types of legal protection afforded by IP, and thus the introduction demonstrates how we are all affected by IP in our daily lives. Vaidhyanathan wryly points out that 'one reason your latte costs so much at Starbucks is that a good portion of the price pays for all the lawyers' (3) who work to protect the company's myriad IP rights. The chapter on trademarks picks up on the same example by showing how a shop called Dumb Starbucks Coffee, set up by a comedian in Los Angeles in 2014, got into trouble, even though it was an effort at parody and tried to pass itself off as art; it was shut down within seventy-two hours after challenges came from the county health department and the real Starbucks legal team.

Readers are thus carefully coaxed by such intriguing stories and examples to consider how IP law affects them, virtually all the time in one way or another. Vaidhyanathan then goes on in each chapter to limn the main features of each type of IP law, discuss important cases involving each type in the courts, and raise questions about just how well IP law as currently configured serves the public good. Experts...