Biography
Peter Drahos is a Professor in Law and the Director of the Centre for the Governance of Knowledge and Development in the Regulatory Institutions Network (RegNet), College of Asia and the Pacific, at the Australian National University, Canberra. He currently holds a Chair in Intellectual Property at Queen Mary, University of London.
His former positions include Herchel Smith Senior Research Fellow in Intellectual Property at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary, University of London and officer of the Australian Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department.
Peter holds degrees in law, politics and philosophy and is admitted as a barrister and solicitor. He has published widely in law and social science journals on a variety of topics including contract, legal philosophy, telecommunications, intellectual property, trade negotiations and international business regulation. He has worked as a consultant to government, international organizations and international NGOs.
Peter's publications include:
- Information Feudalism: Who Controls the Knowledge Economy? (with John Braithwaite), Earthscan, 2002
- Global Intellectual Property Rights: Knowledge, Access and Development, (with Ruth Mayne), Macmillan, 2002
- Global Business Regulation, (with John Braithwaite), Cambridge University Press, 2000
- A Philosophy of Intellectual Property, Dartmouth, 1996
'Information feudalism is a regime of property rights that is not economically efficient, and does not get the balance right between rewarding innovation and diffusing it ... It makes democrative citizens trespassers on knowledge that should be the common heritage of humankind, their educational birthright. Ironically, information feudalism, by dismantling the publicness of knowledge, will eventually rob the knowledge economy of much of its productivity.'
Information Feudalism
(with John Braithwaite) 2002
'In approaching issues and theories related to the justification, formation, extension and enforcement of intellectual property rights we should have an instrumental attitude rather than a proprietarian one.'
A Philosophy of Intellectual Property
1996
'Intellectual property is an area where structural power meets and usually trumps the negotiating coalitions and tactics of the weak.'
'Four Lessons for Developing Countries
from the Trade Negotiations over Access to Medicines'
2007
'Each strand in global webs of regulation may be weak, but when NGOs learn to pull the right strand at the right moment they can tighten the knots that bind them into a wider fabric of social action.'
'Ratcheting Up and Driving Down Global Regulatory Standards'
(with John Braithwaite) 1999
'Developing countries could, as a matter of sovereign right, adopt a scheme of protection for indigenous knowledge without breaching any of their
international treaty obligations in the field of intellectual property.'
'Thinking Strategically about Intellectual Property Rights'
1997
'A treaty on access to knowledge should, through its committees of technical experts, draw on the insights of entrepreneurship and foster the growth of networks that stretch across developed and developing countries.'
'Access to Knowledge: Time for a Treaty?'
2005