Carol Rose, ‘Foreword: A Real Property Lawyer Cautiously Inspects the Edges of Intellectual Property’

Abstract:
The contributing scholars in this volume take up some of the most hotly contested issues in intellectual property, as revealed in their commentaries on a set of intriguingly ambivalent cases. This Foreword gives the perspective of a “real” (as in real estate) lawyer on these edgy IP materials. The cases and commentaries raise a number of questions: What is IP all about, anyway? Is it money? self-expression? vanity? The cases suggest all of the above. And what does it mean to be at the “edge”? One edge means in or out of IP, as in the debates about fashion. Another edge refers to borders between one IP domain or another, as in the slippage between patent and trade secret. Still another edge is “edgy,” especially the way in which parody slips the knife in its targets. But big question that dominates these commentaries revolves around the way that social and legal institutions can structure, encourage, or discourage innovation.

Rose, Carol M., Foreword: A Real Property Lawyer Cautiously Inspects the Edges of Intellectual Property (October 23, 2013). Intellectual Property at the Edge: The Contested Countours of IP, Rochelle Cooper Dreyfuss and Jane C. Ginsburg, eds., 2014, Forthcoming; Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper No. 13-49.

First posted 2013-10-26 11:04:51

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