Legal philosophy of intellectual property.

See - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intellectual-property/


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Intellectual Property

First published Tue Mar 8, 2011; substantive revision Mon Sep 22, 2014

Intellectual property is generally characterized as non-physical property that is the product of original thought. Typically, rights do not surround the abstract non-physical entity; rather, intellectual property rights surround the control of physical manifestations or expressions of ideas. Intellectual property law protects a content-creator's interest in her ideas by assigning and enforcing legal rights to produce and control physical instantiations of those ideas.

Legal protections for intellectual property have a rich history that stretches back to ancient Greece and before. As different legal systems matured in protecting intellectual works, there was a refinement of what was being protected within different areas. Over the same period several strands of moral justification for intellectual property were offered: namely, personality-based, utilitarian, and Lockean. Finally, there have been numerous critics of intellectual property and systems of intellectual property protection. This essay will discuss all of these topics, focusing on Anglo-American and European legal and moral conceptions of intellectual property.

• 1. History of Intellectual Property
• 2. The Domain of Intellectual Property
  • 2.1 Copyright
  • 2.2 The Creative Commons, Copyleft, and Licensing
  • 2.3 Patents
  • 2.4 Trade Secret
  • 2.5 Trademark
  • 2.6 Protecting Mere Ideas
  • 2.7 Droits Morals: Continental Systems of Intellectual Property
• 3. Justifications and Critiques
  • 3.1 Personality-Based Justifications of Intellectual Property
  • 3.2 The Utilitarian Incentives-Based Argument for Intellectual Property
  • 3.3 Lockean Justifications of Intellectual Property
• 4. General Critiques of Intellectual Property
  • 4.1 Information is Not Property
  • 4.2 Information is Non-Rivalrous
  • 4.3 Information Wants to be Free
  • 4.4 The Free Speech Argument against Intellectual Property
  • 4.5 The Social Nature of Information Argument
  • 4.6 The Cost of Publishing Digital Information
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries
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