Trans-Imperial Strategies for Keeping Medicines as Private Assets from 1500 to 1900

‘Secrets to Patents’ at the 2025 ISHTIP 16th Annual Workshop – “Intellectual Property and Capitalism”

Published by

Natacha Klein Käfer

23 Jul 2025

‘Secrets to Patents’ at the 2025 ISHTIP 16th Annual Workshop – “Intellectual Property and Capitalism”

This June, the research environment Secrets to Patents joined the Annual Workshop of the International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP). This inspiring event took place in Madrid between 25-26 June 2025. With a fantastic mix of well-established and early-career scholars, the workshop highlighted perspectives from multiple disciplines, encompassing themes of intellectual property in health, agriculture, commerce, and publishing and authorship, to name a few. You can find the complete programme of the event on the ISHTIP website.

The Project

The Research Environment Secrets to Patents investigates the long-term history of how life-saving and health-improving medicines became for-profit commodities from 1500 to 1900. Focusing on the Atlantic Colonial Nexus, the project’s team will investigate the strategies that different historical agents used to claim ownership of medicinal knowledge.

Funding

Secrets to Patents has been generously funded by the Swedish Research Council (2025-2030) and hosted at Lund University (SE), in collaboration with the Centre for Privacy Studies at the University of Copenhagen (DK) and the History Department of Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (BR).

Remain in touch with the project’s activities and publications