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

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

> It is certainly true that the legal and other media, lawyers and the
> judiciaries have begun using the term.  That's something that is recent, and
> that specifically needs correcting.  We will benefit greatly from some
> precedent-setting case in which somebody asserts that the term is incorrect,
> based on an informed account of the history of the origin of the term, as
> well as the judicial precedent prior to the term which refutes its veracity.

That is quite easy.

The term "exclusion rights" (Ausschlussrechte) and "law of immaterial
goods" (Immaterialgueterrecht) are both firmly established, at least in
german and some other european traditions, whereas the term "IP", as
presently used, is new and aberrant from its original uses.  In
particular, it is wrong to subsume patents and trademarks under
"intellectual property", and even using it to denote copyright has the
drawback that value connotations are conveyed (same as would be the case
if we called it "intellectual monopoly", just positive instead of
negative).  Therefore the term "IP" as used to day can only be said to be
a propaganda term, not suitable for serious debate.

"Intellectual Property" came into use only as an antonym to "Industrial
Property", e.g. for the purpose of creating a dichotomy between copyright
(related to individual intellect, somewhat closer to natural law) and
patents etc (related to the industrial sphere, not interfering with civil
life, subject to utility considerations only).

-- 
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/