Review of Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property: Creative Production in Legal and Cultural Perspective

As thin as the gossamer of thought and as thick as the successful entrepreneur's bankroll, the concept of intellectual property (IP) navigates a wavering line between imagination and materiality. What is authorship? What is invention? And what does it take to convert ideas into property—that is, into rights that can be asserted, protected, licensed, sold, exchanged, and turned into money? As the twenty-three chapters in this dauntingly diverse collection demonstrate, it takes all sorts of actors, all sorts of objects, and all sorts of relationships to hold together an institution that, belying its name, is neither conventional property nor solely of the intellect.