Quote:
Originally Posted by Harmon
There are all sorts of legal concepts that disappear, or are replaced by new ones as times change. The oath of fealty is an example. Made sense under feudalism. Not very useful for democracy, but in some sense has been replaced by citizenship - and citizenship itself is changing and might seem quaint in a hundred years or so. I think that IP is going down the same road. Some vestige of the concept will linger, like the Cheshire Cat's smile, even where physical products have been supplanted by digital ones, but eventually, the whole cat will be gone.
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There's one caveat, though. It might be that the political and economic power of corporate entities intent on maintaining the concept of IP in the areas of patent and trademark will prevail to such an extent that the concept of IP in the area of copyright will continue to exist.
I could make an analogy to slavery in the US, which continued to exist despite being a vestige of a pre-industrial economy, because of the political power of the southern states, coupled with the economic interests in the slaveholding economy. It took a war to change the law.