Re: [Patents] Intellectual property (was European Consitution)

[Russell McOrmond <russell@flora.ca>]

On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, [UTF-8] Gérald Sédrati-Dinet wrote:

> I agree with Jozef and Simo that "intellectual property" term should
> never been authorized in an official convention.

  The term "intellectual property" has a meaning that is understood in
legal circles, but generally misunderstood by laypersons.   I don't 
entirely agree with RMS that the term should always be avoided, but check 
first that your audience understands the term before talking about this 
specific subset of intangible properties that includes copyright, patents, 
trademarks, industrial design, etc.

  Intangible property in general is economic policy which should be
understood as temporary and changing as the nature of an economy changes.  
It is not a legitimate rights issue which is what should be in a
constitution.

  It is important here to separating moral rights, which can be seen as
inherent in the creator/inventor (and thus more of a human right), from
economic rights, which are temporary economic policy.


  Constitutions are supposed to be hard-to-change foundations.  While it 
is appropriate to include discussion of the moral rights of creators and 
inventors in such a document, getting into economic rights is a disaster 
of the cart pulling the horse.



  On this topic I always find the United Nations Declaration of Human 
Rights very telling:  http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

    Article 27. (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral
    and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or
    artistic production of which he is the author.


  There it is -- the root of much debate about how to interpret that 
language, and the obvious conflicts that exist with other articles of the 
same declaration.

  What constitutes moral interests?  The United States has outright
opposed recognition of moral rights in copyright.  For that matter, the US
trade negotiators have opposed anything that protects the rights that
human creators would have that could not be taken from them by an
employer/etc under the "work for hire" or contractual rights regime.


  What constitutes material interests?  Is this as it is in some countries
which is an extreme protectionist policy for specific small subsets of
business models (primarily chosen because of what I consider to be corrupt
relationships between media monopolies and government)?

  What constitutes a scientific, literary or artistic production?

  And of interest to this forum, which is which? 
  (The extremists often suggest whichever form affords them the maximum
protection for works done in the past, and minimum requirement to do any
future innovation).


And onward from there...   ;-)

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> 
 Governance software that controls ICT, automates government policy, or
 electronically counts votes, shouldn't be bought any more than 
 politicians should be bought.  -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/