17

The efficiency and distributive effects of the global knowledge economy are deeply affected by the rules of intellectual property. The present article describes how these rules were globalized by a small group of individuals in the 1980s. This group developed a strategy that was driven by a single idea-US intellectual-property standards could be imposed on all other countries by incorporating these rules into the international trade regime. The result of this strategy is a global intellectual-property ratchet that continues to push intellectual-property standards ever higher. This US hegemony over the global knowledge economy has potentially devastating consequences for economic development. In effect, the “information rich” have found new ways to rob the “information poor”. The article looks at some consequences, especially the effects of patent rules on access to medicines. The author concludes that the US has had a historically unprecedented opportunity to use its stock of knowledge to further the development of the many poor states in the world, but for the time being the US state and US multinationals remained committed partners in the institutional project of information feudalism, that is the project of acquiring and maintaining global power based on the ownership of knowledge assets.