Intellectual Property and Information Control: Philosophic Foundations and Contemporary Issues

by Adam Moore

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780765808325
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	08/31/2004
Edition description:	New Preface by the Author
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

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.

Table of Contents

1: Introduction and Overview; 2: The Domain of Intellectual Property; 3: Against Rule-Utilitarian Intellectual Property; 4: A Pareto-Based Proviso on Original Acquisition; 5: Toward a Lockean Theory of Intellectual Property; 6: Justifying Acts, Systems, and Institutions; 7: A New Look at Copyrights, Patents, and Trade Secrets; 8: Intangible Property: Privacy, Power, and Information Control 1; 9: Employee Monitoring, Nondisclosure Agreements, and Intangible Property 1; 10: Owning Genetic Information and Gene Enhancement Techniques 1; 11: Information Control and Public Policy: The Encryption Debate

Editorial Reviews

"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

From the Publisher