ABSTRACT
Intellectual property rights have a particular relationship with processes of regionalization and transregionalization, which the author will illustrate by connecting the history of the propertization of cultural and scientific relations with the history of regionalization and transregionalization of social, political, and legal orders. Intellectual property rights were implemented mainly in the culture of elites and in industrialized mass culture. Large and medium-sized 'cultural and industrial states' protected the intellectual property rights of their entrepreneurs, inventors, and authors primarily through a network of bilateral trade agreements, which often confirmed both material and immaterial property rights and regulated the exchange of all kinds of goods. In the 1870s, discussions about the international harmonization of intellectual property rights were revived by the great powers in European and global culture-, media-, and science-based industries. In the early twentieth century, European lawyers were convinced that their intellectual property rights were a universal principle and institution.
