Huh? Normal property law is plainly not applicable to a non-rival good like information (unlike for instance a physical DVD: if someone takes a DVD from me, I don’t have it anymore). “Intellectual property” is, but it is not so much a legal regime as confusing shorthand for a number of distinct ones:
- Trademark law, which applies to markings on copies rather than copies themselves;
- Trade secret law, which stops applying when the information escapes into the wild through the secret-holder’s own actions;
- Patent law, which definitionally only applies to public knowledge as an incentive to not keep it secret instead;
- Publicity rights, which only apply to depictions or discussions of natural persons;
- Moral rights, which are mostly about being recognized as the author and even in their strongest incarnations do not restrict unmodified copies;
- Database right, which isn’t applicable as we’re not talking about a compendium of things, and anyway does not exist in the US and most other places outside the EU;
- Copyright, which you’ve conceded is not applicable here.
There’s no “intellectual property” distinct from these things, and none of them are relevant.
Huh? Normal property law is plainly not applicable to a non-rival good like information (unlike for instance a physical DVD: if someone takes a DVD from me, I don’t have it anymore). “Intellectual property” is, but it is not so much a legal regime as confusing shorthand for a number of distinct ones:
- Trademark law, which applies to markings on copies rather than copies themselves;
- Trade secret law, which stops applying when the information escapes into the wild through the secret-holder’s own actions;
- Patent law, which definitionally only applies to public knowledge as an incentive to not keep it secret instead;
- Publicity rights, which only apply to depictions or discussions of natural persons;
- Moral rights, which are mostly about being recognized as the author and even in their strongest incarnations do not restrict unmodified copies;
- Database right, which isn’t applicable as we’re not talking about a compendium of things, and anyway does not exist in the US and most other places outside the EU;
- Copyright, which you’ve conceded is not applicable here.
There’s no “intellectual property” distinct from these things, and none of them are relevant.