Artificial Intelligence, Intellectual Property, and Epistemic Injustice: A Feminist Legal Analysis of Generative AI

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) represents one of the most significant technological advancements of the twenty-first century, transforming creative production, knowledge generation, and the limits of intellectual property law. However, beneath its promise of democratized innovation lies a contested legal landscape, one where existing legal frameworks find it challenging to accommodate AI-generated authorship, and where the structural exclusions historically ingrained in intellectual property systems are being exacerbated and amplified on a large scale. This paper explores the intersection of GenAI, intellectual property rights (IPR), and feminist theory through three perspectives. Firstly, it examines the primary legal challenges presented by GenAI across copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret law, tracing landmark cases, and mapping emerging legislative responses across multiple jurisdictions. Secondly, utilizing Miranda Fricker's framework of epistemic injustice, the paper critically analyzes how gender-biased GenAI outputs, demonstrated through case studies of DALL-E 2, Wordplay.ai, and UNESCO's evaluation of GPT-2 and LLaMA2, systematically diminish the perceived competence and credibility of women and sexual and gender minorities, perpetuating both testimonial and hermeneutical injustice on a large scale. Lastly, the paper contextualizes these harms within the wider framework of women's structural marginalization in IP systems, where only 16% of WIPO patent applications are submitted by women, and where the narrow definition of originality in IP law continues to exclude traditionally female-coded forms of creative labor. This paper argues that the dominant ‘invention paradigm’ underpinning intellectual property law, embedded in the figure of the individual, rational, and implicitly masculine inventor, is fundamentally inadequate for addressing the collective, relational, and intersectional nature of knowledge production emphasized within feminist epistemology. As GenAI increasingly blurs the distinctions between authorship and ownership, this issue becomes more significant, necessitating legal frameworks that transcend mere formal neutrality in favor of genuine equity. By referencing feminist technology diplomacy and initiatives such as the FA+IR Network, Data Against Feminicide, and the Charter of Feminist Demands from the Global South, the paper concludes with a set of policy and reform suggestions designed to integrate gender equity into the governance of both GenAI and intellectual property law.