Intellectual Property Rights: A Defense

(The following is taken from some remarks I recently made on a Facebook friend's wall. For the sake of anonymity, I will refuse to mention that friend's name, unless I am told otherwise.)

       

Imagine the following cases: 

(1) A carpenter builds a shelf.

(2) A novelist writes a novel.

(3) A doctor devises a new pharmaceutical.

and, of course,

(4) A professor writes a paper on some esoteric topic.

Surely, it's at least plausible to think that the carpenter in (1) deserves both the recognition and the profits that he receives from building the shelf. If someone were to take the shelf from him and sell it, it seems the person who did this would be abusing the carpenter's right to the recognition and the profit from building the shelf. One might also say the same about the novelist and a novel. Surely, the novelist deserves both recognition and credit for his writing a certain novel that he writes. And anyone who prints copies of this novel and sells it without acknowledging the writer's first having written it and giving the writer some share of this profit it seems to commit an injustice against the writer. Or similarly, anyone who just makes minor changes to the text of the novel, prints it, and then sells it without acknowledging the author's first having written it and giving the author due credit for it seems to commit an injustice against the author.

                But what, then, makes this case any different from the case in which the carpenter builds a shelf? For it is the very *same* novel that is being sold in each and every case in which one prints one. It might be a different copy in each case, but why should that be relevant? And if the changes from the copy one illicitly makes and sells are minor or not significant, how does this make the case different from one in which someone just copies the novel word for word and then sells it without acknowledgment?

                And if what I've just said is right, it will be hard I think to distinguish the case of the novelist from that of the doctor. The product that the doctor devises is the very same or nearly the very same in every copy that is made and distributed. Perhaps one difference between the two is that the copies of the medicine the doctor makes are used up after every instance in which one uses them. But why should this be relevant for determining whether someone who makes copies of this medicine without acknowledging the doctor does or does not commit an injustice to the doctor in so making copies of it?

                And, of course, if these last two cases are good examples of cases in which someone has intellectual property rights, why would this be any different in the last case, in (4)? Perhaps one will say that no one has a copyright on the truth. And maybe this is true (no pun intended). But it is decidedly unclear what this means. Surely, no one has a copyright that they can claim over something just in virtue of its being true. But this doesn't mean that someone can't claim a copyright on a product that just *happens* to be true, and over which they assert a right in virtue of their having devised or written that product. I can, for example, claim ownership over a medicine that doesn't (very likely not to my knowledge) work or for a paper containing a theorem that is (again not to my knowledge) not right. And in this case, the medicine's not working and the theorem's not being right doesn't affect my ownership rights over either. But then why should the medicine's working and the theorem's being right remove my right from the product?

                But surely, one might protest, I don't have a right to the theorem itself, for surely neither I nor anyone has a right to ownership over anything of that sort, whatever it turns out that a theorem is. This I concede. But I never claimed that I or anyone should have such a right, nor do I think I've claimed anything that implies that I or anyone have such a right. What I have claimed is that, in the case of the theorem, I or anyone else who writes it have a claim of ownership over the paper itself.     

               For assume that one has ownership over a certain piece of intellectual property, i.e., a novel, a certain drug, or an academic paper. Now, the objection is that from:

(1) I have ownership over X,

it follows that:

(2) I have ownership over everything in X.

But from (2), we obtain an absurd result in certain situations, namely, that

(3) I have ownership over a mathematical theorem.

As I mentioned earlier, I readily concede that (3) is absurd, and if my view really implies (3), I should readily abandon it. But in response, I would point out that (2) does not follow from (1). For (2) implies that

(4) I have ownership over the word "London,"

because the word "London" appears in my novel or academic paper. Nor is there any reason that is given as to why someone who affirms (1) is actually committed to (2), i.e., no reason is given as to why someone who affirmed (1) would, in affirming (1), have to affirm (2). Here, perhaps the objector will try to reformulate the objection so to avoid this difficulty. Maybe one should reformulate (2) as

(2*) I have ownership over all the things in X that are represented by words in X.

But (2*) seems actually worse than (2). For (2*) implies that, rather than having ownership over just the word "London," I instead have ownership over London itself; for, clearly, the word "London" represents the entity or thing London, the city.

                Here, perhaps the objector will try to insist that if one does not affirm that (2) follows from (1), one will not be entitled to the claim that one deserves recognition for having first discovered the theorem that appears in one's academic paper. But I don't see why this is the case. If I have the right to the recognition of having written a certain paper, I a fortiori have the right to the recognition of anything new that I discovered and published in that paper. It is just not clear to me why someone would have to claim ownership over, say, a certain theorem in order to be recognized as having first discovered that theorem. And though I have property rights over the paper containing the theorem, it does not follow that I have rights over the theorem itself.