Interesting, well-researched article, IMO. The one component that may make the article more relevant has to do with digital Intellectual Property, which may or may not be the same as patentable ideas. While it seems obvious to me that IP is still property, my nephew, a self-avowed hacker, once said to me of his unabashedly stealing IP “The failure of these business models is not my problem.” Which I thought at the time and still think is a moral/ethical lapse of good judgement. Is stealing work product like or exactly like patent infringement? “Informations wants to be free!” is a rallying cry, but lacks nuance. Anyway, great article, thank you!
Digital IP is kind of interesting because IP is a creature of Congress. It isn’t like real property where there is a common law basis for it exactly (though many parts of the doctrine come from common law, like fair use). So basically it is up to Congress to determine what the right social mix is. With digital IP clearly there are some things that should remain IP and that doesn’t change just because the form changes (like stealing a movie) but there are aspects where the ease of replication may cause us to want to change the balance of some of these rights. It comes up more in copyright than in patents. (Larry Lessig has a great talk on “remix culture” and the ways in which laws might evolve to accommodate new art forms.) Thanks for reading!
Interesting, well-researched article, IMO. The one component that may make the article more relevant has to do with digital Intellectual Property, which may or may not be the same as patentable ideas. While it seems obvious to me that IP is still property, my nephew, a self-avowed hacker, once said to me of his unabashedly stealing IP “The failure of these business models is not my problem.” Which I thought at the time and still think is a moral/ethical lapse of good judgement. Is stealing work product like or exactly like patent infringement? “Informations wants to be free!” is a rallying cry, but lacks nuance. Anyway, great article, thank you!
Digital IP is kind of interesting because IP is a creature of Congress. It isn’t like real property where there is a common law basis for it exactly (though many parts of the doctrine come from common law, like fair use). So basically it is up to Congress to determine what the right social mix is. With digital IP clearly there are some things that should remain IP and that doesn’t change just because the form changes (like stealing a movie) but there are aspects where the ease of replication may cause us to want to change the balance of some of these rights. It comes up more in copyright than in patents. (Larry Lessig has a great talk on “remix culture” and the ways in which laws might evolve to accommodate new art forms.) Thanks for reading!