Pro-corporate IP advocacy replaced competition discourse with protection and exclusion language

Evidence

While, as shown above, the received economic analysis was about finding the balance between rewarding innovation and throttling it, campaigners for global IP protection wrapped themselves “in the mantle of property rights.” The new language of IP in the 1980s figured it as “a system to protect and exclude, rather than one based on competition and diffusion.” National competitiveness rather than the competitive order was the watchword, a shift signaled by the Presidential Commission on Industrial Competitiveness created in 1984 and the rise of both competitiveness indices and the competitiveness advice industry. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 198

Categorization

• XREF: This directly fractures the caricature of ‘neoliberalism = free market competition everywhere’ — connects to the general reading purpose on internal varieties/debates within neoliberal thought, and to how competitiveness served as a nationalist departure from ordoliberal competitive order. — connects to: The 1994 WTO TRIPS agreement made intellectual property binding global law — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 164; Even hardcore IP advocates conceded patents chiefly protect monopolies — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 193; Eighties IP rhetoric reframed intellectual property as exclusion over competition — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 198 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Eighties IP rhetoric reframed intellectual property as exclusion over competition #corroborates (1.00) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 198
• Early neoliberals widely saw patent reform as anti-monopoly competition policy #contradicts (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 181
• Neoliberal IP orthodoxy was dictated by corporate lobbyists, not market theorists #expands (0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 200
• The 2010s revived antitrust as a contested public domain #expands (0.75) — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 107
• Industries equate product use with free speech to shift regulatory debate #exemplifies (0.75)
• Neoliberals weaponized human rights language to protect private property and market order #expands (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 76
• Neoliberalism inverted classical liberalism by defending monopoly and corporate power #complicates (0.70) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 175