The Flame of Knowledge: A Critical Realist Approach to Information Policy and Intellectual Property

Most intellectual property scholarship in the United States proceeds from a utilitarian perspective, using the tools of law and economics, while a significant minority position adopts postmodern critiques of IP regimes. However, as yet there has been no socioeconomic framework that could synthesize the best insights of the utilitarian and critical perspectives while also offering a stronger normative grounding for information policy. Utilizing critical realism, a broad philosophical and epistemological approach to knowledge, information, and culture that avoids the extremes of both modern positivism and postmodern skepticism, this book constructs a new narrative framework for debates over access to information. Its balanced approach suggests a philosophical and normative basis for information policy that is deeper than pragmatic welfare economics and richer than bare assertions of political will. Tracing intellectual property policy from its founding myth in Thomas Jefferson’s famous metaphor of knowledge as the flame on a candle, and critiquing both of the predominant strands of IP scholarship, The Flame of Knowledge demonstrates how this new ethical paradigm can contribute to the ongoing discussion of issues including network neutrality, internet governance, cybersecurity, and the relationship between trade secret and patent law.