Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
Copyright and patents are granted in the US Constitution in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 -
[The Congress shall have Power] "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Nothing is said about property, though the term property is used elsewhere in the Constitution. Neither copyright nor patents were treated as property when the Constitution was written. As I have shown earlier in the thread, the writers of the Constitution most closely tied to the copyright clause did not consider copyright to be property.
I can rent a house. I can sign a 1 year lease. I can sub lease that house to someone else, but that doesn't make it my property even through I can use that lease to generate profit. While you may call it "intellectual property", it's also known as intangible property. Intangible property includes things like copyright, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, debts and company good will. Should company good will be treated as physical property? How about debts? One can trade debts, sell them to someone else, but that doesn't make them property. Rather it's a type of contract. There are many things that are treated in manners similar to tangible property for various legal reasons, but that doesn't mean that they are actually property. Copyright is better understood as a type of lease than actual property. You may want that lease to go on forever, but unless both parties agree, it doesn't.
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And this exists because it's been written into law. Guess what? Laws can be changed.