Re: [Patents] Washington Times: Internet Patents Divide Industry

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

>     > "Intellectual property" is not property.
>
>     The term could be turned around to be useful.
>     E.g. one could say that only an exclusion scope that it is so narrow 
> that
>     it is attributable to an individual is "intellectual property".
>
> The term "intellectual property" encourages overgeneralization, which
> leads people to choose between a few bad across-the-board alternatives.
> There is no way to turn the term around to prevent that problem.
> We have to attack it.

There are in fact many contexts in which "IPR" should simply be replaced
by "patents" or "copyright" or whatever is meant.  When companies do
dishonorable things with patents, it is nowadays standard behavior to hide
this behind the term "IPR".  Some general concepts are even specifically
created for the purpose of such hide-and-seek games.  E.g.
"computer-implemented invention".

But "intellectual property" is not such an example.  The generalisation
in this term is needed in many contexts.  We can not chose whether we want
this concept to exist, we can only chose how to name it.

The main problem with the term seems to be that "property" has a positive
connotation.  Just as "monopoly" has a negative connotation, although the
denotation of both of these words is the same: exclusive control over
something.

If fighting the propagandistic effect of the word "intellectual property"
is our primary goal, then we should perhaps say "intellectual monopoly".
But that could be silly, because we do not want to launch these emotional
weapons indiscriminately against everything that is usually lumped
together as "intellectual property".

One good alternative which does not convey irrational connotations is
"exclusion rights".

German law also has traditional terms such as "law of immaterial goods"
(Immaterialgueterrecht) or "immaterial assets" (immaterielle
Vermoegensgueter) which are in many contexts good replacements for "IPR".

Whatever we chose, we can not prevent people from using this general
concept preferably in a context where they have some bad specific thing
(such as software patents) to hide.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
155,000 votes 2000 firms against software patents    http://noepatents.org/