EECS 690 Property and Intellectual Property 11 February 2011

Property as a right Deontological Justification: You would want everyone to respect the things that you possess as your property, so you should then respect everyone else’s property. This makes property (generally) a negative right. Utilitarian Justification: Having property makes people happier, and so property should only be taken away under limited circumstances. Often in the history of Western Philosophy property has been called a natural right. This is a cultural artifact.

Property as a bundle of rights What kinds of specific rights one has toward their property depends upon the kind of property it is. –Real: Land –Tangibile: objects like books, coffee mugs, diamond rings, etc. –Intangible: money, stocks, bonds, etc. –Intellectual: expressions of ideas

Three key features of IP 1.Infinitely Shareable: having an idea does not preclude anybody else from having the same idea, even after I give it away. 2.Incremental: many, if not most or all, ideas build upon ides previously had and shared by others. 3.Primarily Social: IP is valueless when not shared or used in the public sphere.

The basis for Legal IP protection The US Constitution lays out the legal basis for IP protection in the Constitution (Article I Section 8), and this basic statement is also a plausible moral basis for the protection of IP: “To Promote the Progress of Science and of the Useful Arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” –This establishes the common good as the purpose of the protection –The part about the limited time is especially noteworthy as we’ll come to see.

Types of IP protection: Copyright: protects expressions of ideas, most commonly in songs, and writings. Patents: Protects inventions and innovations Trade Secrecy: adds legal sanction to the efforts of a company to keep a process secret from competitors.

For a Limited Time: It makes sense to believe that a good way of encouraging useful and enjoyable publication is to allow those responsible for that publication to profit from their publication for a time. After sufficient time has elapsed, it also makes sense to say that the ideas that were once protected should be in the public domain, so anyone is free to use them to further advance the arts and sciences.

Current Copyright problems See DeGeorge for a recent history of copyright time limits. There are several problems with this trend: –it is unjust, giving great benefit to those who are not responsible for the ideas –it may stifle progress in science and the arts –it may do widespread cultural damage