The Color of Creatorship examines how copyright, trademark, and patent
discourses work together to form American ideals around race,
citizenship, and property.
Working through key moments in intellectual property history since 1790,
Anjali Vats reveals that even as they have seemingly evolved, American
understandings of who is a creator and who is an infringer have remained
remarkably racially conservative and consistent over time. Vats examines
archival, legal, political, and popular culture texts to demonstrate how
intellectual properties developed alongside definitions of the "good
citizen," "bad citizen," and intellectual labor in racialized ways.
Offering readers a theory of critical race intellectual property, Vats
historicizes the figure of the citizen-creator, the white male maker who
was incorporated into the national ideology as a key contributor to the
nation's moral and economic development. She also traces the emergence
of racial panics around infringement, arguing that the post-racial
creator exists in opposition to the figure of the hyper-racial
infringer, a national enemy who is the opposite of the hardworking,
innovative American creator.
The Color of Creatorship contributes to a rapidly-developing
conversation in critical race intellectual property. Vats argues that
once anti-racist activists grapple with the underlying racial structures
of intellectual property law, they can better advocate for strategies
that resist the underlying drivers of racially disparate copyright,
patent, and trademark policy.
