Camp and patent law

Can patent law be camp? Camp challenges the stability of binary values and encourages the spectator to centre themselves in the appreciation of an object or thing. Camp is at once playful and subversive, delighting in the outmoded and leftover. It is intrinsically linked to queer analysis and questions dominant or traditional configurations of object and subject. Patent law has not typically been approached from this perspective, though there is important queer work in intellectual property generally and a consistent literature that approaches the visual elements of the patent. This article suggests that patent law can, in fact, be camp and the process of rendering patent law absurd highlights how precarious its fundamental assumptions are. By replacing the typical values involved in patent law, camp reveals that binaries like inventive/non-inventive, novel/known and even physical/abstract, are the result of continual support by actors within the patent system rather than an inherent or inevitable quality of patent law.