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

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

> "Exclusive rights" is a very good general term.

Still you have the problem that these rights function as assets in the
accounting of companies.  And the word "property" reflects that while
"exclusion" does not.

"property" is generally understood to be an "exclusion right which
constitutes an asset".

So it appears that it is very difficult to get rid of the term "property"
in this context.  Unless you want to say "exclusion assets".

The term "property" was not only introduced because it attaches a positive
connotation to questionable exclusion practises, but also because it is
the only reasonably short and descriptive word for the subject under
discussion.

Tough luck, as often the case with language.

There may be little choice but to shoulder the burden of removing the
unjustified positive connotation from the word "property".  And meanwhile
telling people that patents belong to "industrial property" and the
all-ecompassing category which includes both industrial and intellectual
property is called

        immaterial property

This is a quite descriptive term, and it also allows people to make the
point about the differences in economics of the material vs immaterial.

Of course words such as "exclusion rights", "immaterial assets",
"exclusivity", "information exclusivity" etc continue to be useful
variants for one or the other context.

-- 
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/