Patents as Vehicles of Social and Moral Concerns: The Case of Johnson & Johnson Disposable Feminine Hygiene Products (1925–2012)

Abstract

This paper is about disposability as a technological concern and about how to trace the related issues through the analysis of patents. It examines how moral and social concerns happened to be embedded (or not) in technology, based on the case of disposable feminine hygiene products. The focus is placed on what “disposable” means and on exploring relative notions as well as their dynamic and consequences. To conduct such analysis, the paper proposes to perform a classic and computer-assisted analysis of the patents published by Johnson & Johnson over almost a century (1925–2012). Tracing social and moral concerns in patents challenges the existing literature in law, which tends to envision patents as legal assets deprived of moral considerations. The paper shows how hygiene products addressed women, how these products were made disposable, and how what disposability means evolved, both in the heart of technology and in the wider space of “concerned” markets.