> IP is NOT estate.
> You should avoid using the missleading name: Intelectual *Property*

I think your distinction is false. There are many kinds of "property"
recognized by the law. You have real-estate (land, buildings, etc.),
you have chattel (also called "possessions"), and you have intellectual
property.
I believe (but I am not a lawyer either ;)) that IP is offically called
that in the appropriate laws, so you cannot just reinvent a different
name for it.

Anyway, why am I saying your distinction is false? It's easy to see the
distinction between *chattel* and IP. You have total control over your
chattel, you can hide it in a safe, guard it, nobody will know you have
it, and so on. But real-estate property isn't that far from IP:

Owning Real-estate lets you restrict what other people do with you piece
of property (land, building, etc.). But it does not get you absolute control
about this property. Planes can go above it, and gophers can burrow below
it. State officials can enter your property with the proper warrant, or in
case of emergency. The city can confiscate your land or parts of it for
certain uses. The laws of the country still apply on your property, and you
are not allowed to kill people on it at a whim, or to start a tax-free zone
on it. Tenants on your property can (under some circumstances) stay on your
property without you having the right to evict them, and sometimes without
you even being able to control the amount of rent they pay.

So any property rights, not just IP rights, are "negative rights", meaning
they are rights that *prevent* other people from doing certain things to
you. None of the property rights are absolute, in the sense that other rights
(the right to life is most obvious, but certainly not the only one) can
come before it. In that sense, IP is indeed treated as a kind of property.

Note that I'm not saying that IP *should* be a kind of property - or that
IP should exist at all - I'm just saying how it is treated in the law systems
I'm familiar with (namely Israel and the U.S.).


-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |      Monday, Nov 25 2002, 20 Kislev 5763