Intellectual Property Is the Concept

Intellectual Property

Is the concept of this paper intellectual property? It may seem a strange thing to suggest, but the definition of intellectual property is often just as nebulous. These different interpretations lie at the core of the confusion and the controversies over what is and what is not within this domain. The first, is intellectual property properly property at all (Smith 20007)? The legal definition of property can cover anything from perceptible objects like land, houses, cars, motorbikes, etc. To certain intangibles like debts and domain names. But intellectual property for the most part is information and preventing people from using information, given the ease of attaining it via the penultimate source of the World Wide Web, has become rather difficult (Smith, 2007). One of the most interesting paradoxes is that such a complex subject full of legalese and conundrum could be attracting so much public attention recently. But now that intellectual property has risen in value to billions of dollars in some instances, the public is sitting up and taking notice (Vaidhyanathan, 2005).

Where is the cost and value derived for intellectual property? "Although information itself is a public good and once known would be consumed at zero marginal cost, discovering and making information useful requires inputs that are rival and are susceptible to efforts to exclude" (Smith, 2007, p.1751). And then there is the time honored, at least in some countries, use of copyright and/or trademark to create incentives for those "idea" men or women to be able to create something that will have future marketable value.

Other intellectual property regimes, like copyright, focus more on creation, and still others, like trademark, are more concerned with commercialization than with creation Yet all of these regimes reflect a concern that, in their absence, people will have too little incentive to engage in certain activities with respect to information, whether discovering it, commercializing it, or using it to lower consumer search costs. (Smith, 2007, p. 1747)

So Intellectual property has actually be around for some time, but generally speaking it has not been viewed as it is now, separated from its tangible outcome. Viewing intellectual property in this isolated form has been the source of most of the controversy. While certain information, say that in a Shakespearean play is, by and large, enjoyable by anyone, the same with any author's book or artist's painting, owning the right to the ideas behind these is the more indefinable part of this dilemma. The right to distribute is one thing, the right to the idea is another.

It is quite possible that the Internet itself has spawned this idea of intellectual property as separate from tangible property in a quite real way. By viewing the Internet itself as basically intangible, in essence you cannot see the Internet only the result that is given on the screen, certainly has something to do with starting one thinking about this concept. In another enigma, the Internet is often used to violate the Intellectual property of another.

The marked increase in intellectual property theft, combined with the lack of deterrence provided by civil remedies, has led the federal government and most states to enact criminal statutes to prevent the theft of intellectual property and protect owners' rights. The federal government has made trademark and copyright infringement a priority. (Newman, Cai & Heugstenberg, 2007, p. 694)