Intellectual Property and Information Control: Philosophic Foundations and Contemporary Issues - Softcover

Moore, Adam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0765808323 ISBN 13: 9780765808325

Publisher: Routledge, 2004

Synopsis

Computer technology and the proliferation of digital networks have radically altered how ideas and information are gathered and manipulated and generated new conflicts between public use and private rights. These conflicts raise serious problems: Are abstract ideas and information proper subjects of ownership? What role should privacy rights play? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare morally to the violation of physical property rights? Now available in paperback, Intellectual Property and Information Control provides answers and strategies for dealing with these and other questions while mounting a philosophical defense of rights to intellectual and intangible property.

As the book shows, a policy that allows too much access may stymie innovation and cause individuals to isolate themselves. At the other extreme, huge, multinational corporations may hold as intangible property vast amounts of knowledge, including sensitive personal information. Through discussions of patent law, fair use, and practical problems such as privacy in the workplace, Moore demonstrates that intellectual and intangible property rights exist along with privacy rights. The latter will sometimes constrain what can be done with the former.

About this title

About the Author

Adam D. Moore teaches philosophy at the University of Washington, and has also taught at Eastern Michigan University. He is the editor of Intellectual Property: Moral, Legal, and International Dilemmas.

Review

"Moore seeks to address various intellectual property questions of our new information age, with an overall goal of justifying rights in intellectual and intangible property."

—Future Survey

"Moore offers a philosophic defense of intellectual property rights, with consideration to the possibility of owning ideas, public access to information, privacy, and comparisons to physical property rights. Basing his work on a Lockean account, he defends the principles of intellectual property and recommends changes in the institutional and legal practices surrounding them."

—Reference and Research Book News

 

"What is it that we want to protect? First is the brilliant invention, the idea, the notion that makes a new product and the insight that makes a whole new industry. The second thing we want to protect is the investment and the hard work. This is the grunt work. This is the pick-and shovel engineering that turns the idea, the prototype, into a reliable, distributable, maintainable, documented, supportable product."

—Robert Spinrad, Xerox Corporation

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0765808323
• ISBN 13: 9780765808325
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 272