This book argues that intellectual property rights are duty-bearing privileges. Drawing on the work of, amongst others, Grotius, Locke and Hegel, as well as the law of several countries, the book argues that the use of these privileges should be guided by an instrumentalism based on a principle of humanism.

At the end of a thoughtful article on the future of nuclear war, Wiesner and York concluded that: "Both sides in the arms race are... confronted by the dilemma of steadily increasing military power and steadily decreasing national security. It is our considered professional judgment that this dilemma has no technical solution. If the great powers continue to look for solutions in the area of science and technology only, the result will be to worsen the situation.".

As the expansion of the Internet and the digital formatting of all kinds of creative works move us further into the information age, intellectual property issues have become paramount. Computer programs costing thousands of research dollars are now copied in an instant. People who would recoil at the thought of stealing cars, computers, or VCRs regularly steal software or copy their favorite music from a friend's CD. Since the Web has no national boundaries, these issues are international concerns. The contributors-philosophers, (...) legal theorists, and business scholars, among others-address questions such as: Can abstract ideas be owned? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare to the violation of physical property rights? Can computer software and other digital information be protected? And how should legal systems accommodate the ownership of intellectual property in an information age? Intellectual Property is a lively examination of these and other issues, and an invaluable resource for librarians, lawyers, businesspeople, and scholars. (shrink)

As the expansion of the Internet and the digital formatting of all kinds of creative works move us further into the information age, intellectual property issues have become paramount. Computer programs costing thousands of research dollars are now copied in an instant. People who would recoil at the thought of stealing cars, computers, or VCRs regularly steal software or copy their favorite music from a friend's CD. Since the Web has no national boundaries, these issues are international concerns. The contributors-philosophers, (...) legal theorists, and business scholars, among others-address questions such as: Can abstract ideas be owned? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare to the violation of physical property rights? Can computer software and other digital information be protected? And how should legal systems accommodate the ownership of intellectual property in an information age? Intellectual Property is a lively examination of these and other issues, and an invaluable resource for librarians, lawyers, businesspeople, and scholars. (shrink)

_Property Rights: Philosophic Foundations,_ first published in 1977, comprehensively examines the general justifications for systems of private property rights, and discusses with great clarity the major arguments as to the rights and responsibilities of property ownership. In particular, the arguments that hold that there are natural rights derived from first occupancy, labour, utility, liberty and virtue are considered, as are the standard anti-property arguments based on disutility, virtue and inequality, and the belief that justice in distribution must take precedence over (...) private ownership. Lawrence Becker goes on to contend that there are four sound lines of argument for private property that, together with what is sound in the anti-property arguments, must be co-ordinated to form the foundations of a new theory. He therefore expounds a concise but sophisticated theory of property that is relevant to the modern world, and concludes by indicating some of the implications of his theory. (shrink)

In the broadest terms my goal in this work is to justify rights to intellectual property. Rule-utilitarians who offer incentives based arguments think that this goal is easily attained. Rights, they claim, should be granted to authors and inventors of intellectual property because granting such control provides incentives necessary for social progress. Society ought to maximize social utility, therefore, temporary rights to intellectual works should be granted. This argument is typically given as the primary justification for Anglo-American copyright, patent, and (...) trade secret institutions. ;First, a negative argument is given that undermines rule-utilitarian arguments for intellectual property. I argue that internally, on their own grounds, rule-utilitarian arguments fail to justify rights to intellectual property. It is also argued that rule-utilitarianism faces a number of serious objections that may lead to its rejection as a plausible moral theory. ;My positive argument begins with an account of Locke's proviso that justified acquisitions of unowned objects must leave enough and as good for others. One way to interpret Locke's requirement is that it ensures the position of others is not worsened and this can be understood as a version of weak pareto superiority. If the possession and exclusion of an intellectual work makes no worse off, then the acquisition ought to be permitted. ;I argue that rights to intellectual works can be justified at both the level of acts and at the level of institutions. At both levels my argument turns on two features of intellectual property. Given that the frontier of intellectual appropriatable items is practically infinite and that the same intellectual work may be created and owned by two or more individuals, the case for Locke's water-drinker and the author or inventor are quite alike. ;Finally, a Lockean account of copyright, patent, and trade secret is developed along with an analysis of privacy, power, and the ownership of virtual objects, in the new on-line information age. (shrink)