Intellectual Property Law

Paper Summary:

The paper looks at the history of intellectual property laws, and their place in a modern society. The paper discusses how intellectual property law often only protects rights for a limited time period so innovations are constantly under time and renewability constraints. The paper also discusses how intellectual property encompasses a highly varied assortment of quite divergent legal systems. The paper then points out that increased efforts to enforce intellectual property laws generate increased resistance. The paper concludes that nevertheless, the future of intellectual property law is strong, and has many proponents to forward the cause of protecting the rights of the creative.

Outline:
The Basics
The History
The Future
Conclusions

From the Paper:

"Property (speaking here of both general property laws and specific Intellectual Property Law) can be considered one of the keystones of our so-called civilized society. This cornerstone developed over time, in the 19th and 20th centuries, with the development of the industrial age, and its concurrent strengths of the automobile, the airplane and later the telephone, the computer and the Internet.
"More to the point, with intellectual property law, our civilization has finally come to realize that humankind sees all kinds of advantages to ownership of ideas, knowledge and the outcomes of those creations. Any liberty-based arguments for property rights, though, are seemingly unsympathetic to intellectual property claims, for the laws (patent and copyright) interfere with the right of others to use their own bodies or legally obtained property in certain ways."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Blair, Roger D., and Thomas F. Cotter. "An Economic Analysis of Damages Rules in Intellectual Property Law." William and Mary Law Review 39.5 (1998): 1585-1694.
• Brandes, Ronnie Heather, Bonnie L. Kane, and Kelly A. Librera. "Intellectual Property Crimes." American Criminal Law Review 37.2 (2000): 657.
• Clark, Drew. "8 How Copyright Became Controversial." Copy Fights: The Future of Intellectual Property in the Information Age. Ed. Adam Thierer and Wayne Crews. Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2002. 147-161.
• Gaines, Jane M. Contested Culture: The Image, the Voice, and the Law. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
• Halbert, Debora J. Intellectual Property in the Information Age: The Politics of Expanding Ownership Rights. Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1999. .

More papers on Intellectual Property Law:

• Essay # 85162 : "Contemporary Intellectual Property Law"
• Article Review # 134622 : "E-Commerce and Intellectual Property Law"
• Analytical Essay # 118284 : "Intellectual Property Law"
• Term Paper # 105145 : "E-Commerce and Intellectual Property Law"

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