immaterial property titles

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

Here are some recent drafts in which I struggled with these terms

        http://swpat.ffii.org/events/2003/oecd08/index.en.html
        http://www.ffii.org/proj/euipd/ltr0308/

and found that indeed a generalisation was needed in one way or the other.

The latter case (EU IP Enforcement Directive) demonstrates nicely that it
is impossible to set up common rules for a field as diverse as "IP"
currently is.

On the other hand the former text demonstrates that it might be viable to
try to integrate ("harmonise" ?) much of this field by subjecting it to
common requirements, such as individuality of the claimed object,
unlikeliness of inadvertent infringement etc.

Probably you cannot integrate the whole field of "immaterial property"
under such common requirements.  If you take in trademarks and portrait
rights, this field becomes so diverse that it might be easier to set up
meta rules for the whole field of "property" or even wider than that.
"Immaterial property" seems to have little more in common than that

  -- assets are created by means of exclusion which is enforcable with
     the help of state authority (common feature of all "property")
  -- material property is excluded

This is very well reflected by the term "immaterial property titles".

There is currently a need to use this term as a general category and to
push the term "intellectual property" back to where it came from: a
property titles related to individual creations, such as copyright,
distinct from "industrial property".

If any wording battle can be fought here, it is that of re-establishing
the distinction between intellectual and industrial property and
establishing "immaterial property titles" as the needed super-category.

As said before, usually people want to know what specific title is being
talked about, and general terms such as "i.p." serve only to obscure
things in such contexts.  So it is a good idea to avoid them in most
cases, but wrong to claim that they can be avoided altogether.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
160,000 votes 2000 firms against software patents    http://noepatents.org/