Taxonomy, Type Specimens, and the Making of Biological Property in Intellectual Property Rights Law

Despite remaining the most iconic and highly valorized metrical technology of the entire, now globally universalized, project of zoological and botanical taxonomy, very little attention has been given to highlighting the pivotal role that type specimens also play in constructing and disciplining contemporary relations to living property. Building on my earlier work on the relationship between biological classification and regulation, this article provides an overdue analysis of this technology's significance in introducing deposition, priority of publication, and authorship as the key conceptual and functional mechanisms not only of taxonomic classification, but also of the ascendant system for prosecuting rights to ownership of biological novelties in the contemporary era: the Euro-American system of intellectual property law.