not rights [LWN.net]

not rights

Posted Oct 27, 2005 12:29 UTC (Thu) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033)
In reply to: not rights by man_ls
Parent article: Letter to the editor

Yes, I agree, it's an abuse of "intellectual", some of the things it covers are indeed un-intellectual or even anti-intellectual.

Stock analysts refer to things that have value on the balance sheet, but no physical material substance, as intangibles. These include, but are not limited to, patents, copyrights and brand names.

So I'd suggest "intangible property rights", which has the advantage of leaving the acronym IPR unaltered. This also makes it clear that the class is meaningful. If you can kick it, it's ordinary property. If you can't, it's intangible. If the law doesn't let you own it, it's not property at all.

The debate about what rights the law should grant over particular classes of intangible, and indeed over whether there should be any rights granted at all, is unaffected.

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again, not rights, and not a property

Posted Oct 27, 2005 14:46 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

Sorry, but it does not work. As stated above those discussions are not about rights, but about restrictions. Also, many of those things are not property and cannot be treated as such.

Copyright is not a "property", e.g. when you assign a copyright to the FSF you can keep it too. Also, in property there is nothing similar to copyleft. Trade secrets cannot either be assimilated to a "property": you do not "possess" a trade secret. Once it is leaked outside the organization, it does not exist any more. So I would not trust stock analysts too much -- they can put a price on many things which are not worth anything. Remember the internet boom and "price per eyeball"? Was that an "intangible property"?

If you want to leave out "property" and talk about "intangible rights" (or even restrictions), then we can discuss free speech, classified information and all kinds of unrelated things. Not very useful.

It may be hard to grasp, but the reason the term "intellectual property" (also "intellectual property rights") is not correct is because those things lumped under it are a disjoint set, and it makes no sense to discuss them together.