A very good article. A section that really spoke to me: > Prior to the rise of the “intellectual property” as an umbrella term, the different legal regimes it

A very good article. A section that really spoke to me: > Prior to the rise of the “intellectual property” as an umbrella term, the different legal regimes it refers to were customarily referred to by their individual names. When you were talking about patents, you said “pat­ents,” and when you were talking about copyrights, you said “copyrights.” Bunching together copyrights and trademarks and patents and other rules wasn’t particularly useful, since these are all very different legal regimes. On those rare instances in which all of these laws were grouped together, the usual term for them was “creator’s monopolies” or “author’s monopolies.” > The anti-IP argument leans into the differences between the underlying rationale for each of these rules: > * US copyrights exist to “promote the useful arts and sciences” (as set out in the US Constitution); that is, to provide an incentive to the creation of new works of art: copyright should offer enough protection to create these incentives, but no more. Copyright does not extend to “ideas” and only protects “expressions of ideas”; > * Patents exist as incentive for inventors to reveal the workings of their inventions; to receive a patent, you must provide the patent office with a functional description of your invention, which is then published. Even though others may not copy your invention during the patent period, they can study your patent filings and use them to figure out how to do the same thing in different ways, or how to make an interoperable add-on to your invention; > * Trademarks exist as consumer protection: trademarks empower manu­facturers to punish rivals who misleadingly market competing products or services that are like to cause confusion among their customers. It’s not about giving Coca-Cola the exclusive right to use the work “Coke” – it’s about deputizing Coca-Cola to punish crooks who trick Coke drinkers into buying knockoffs. Coke’s trademark rights don’t cover non-deceptive, non-confusing uses of its marks, even if these users harm Coca-Cola, because these do not harm Coke drinkers. > Seen in this light, “intellectual property” is an incoherent category: when you assert that your work has “intellectual property” protection, do you mean that you can sue rivals to protect your customers from deception; or that the government will block rivals if you disclose the inner workings of your machines; or that you have been given just enough (but no more) incentive to publish your expressions of your ideas, with the understanding that the ideas themselves are fair game? > When you look at how “IP” is used by firms, a very precise – albeit colloquial – meaning emerges: > “IP is any law that I can invoke that allows me to control the conduct of my competitors, critics, and customers.”