Content area
Full Text
Peter Drahos, A Philosophy of Intellectual Property, Dartmouth, Aldershot, 1996, 272 pp. Hardcover, 42.50, ISBN 1-85521-240-4
When one considers the notion of property the tendency is to think of the collection of rights and duties existing between individuals in relation to physical objects or resources. This mental link we make between property and physical objects is quite understandable. Take the paradigm of a physical resource that can be subject to property entitlements: land. Land can be claimed, divided up, staked out, occupied. I can readily distinguish and demarcate the piece I claim as 'mine', and recognize that it is different from the portion you claim as 'yours' (hence English law's readiness to decree specific performance of contracts for the sale of land rather than grant the usual remedy of damages: every piece of land is unique, no piece is exactly the same as another). This ability to divide and demarcate a resource is crucial if one is going to make a claim that the resource is the object of one's private property. Property concepts inhabit a scale ranging from common property, where the bundle of rights that make up the individual entitlement to the common resource are weakest (or even non-existent), through to private property, where the bundle of rights are at their strongest. Private property is characterized by an extensive collection of rights over other persons in relation to the resource, chiefly, the rights to control the resource, alienate it and exclude others from access to it.' In contrast, the duties owed to others under a regime of private property are fairly attenuated and are largely reducible to the notion of preventing harm to identifiable others (e.g. neighbours) in the use of the resource. That the notion of intellectual property fits uneasily within such a scheme of private property is the argument presented in this book.
The underlying problem suggested by Drahos is that intellectual property is concerned with abstract objects (DNA sequences, formulae for penicillin, trademarks) rather than the physical objects that have been the dominant concern of philosophers of property. Abstract objects do not have easily identifiable physical boundaries,...