Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,comp.org.eff.talk
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject:  Re: What is theft? (was Re: Legal Tangles During FTP at SRI)
Message-ID: <1993Feb12.134609.10199@eff.org>
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 13:46:09 GMT

In article <1993Feb12.012704.957@netcom.com> strnlght@netcom.com (David Sternlight) writes:

>This is a distortion of what I said. There is a legal and property right
>embodied in, for example, patents. Thus one is not depriving another of the
>"ability" to sell a product, but of a property right. That's quite a
>different matter. Note that a copyright is also a property right. One may
>buy, sell, and license such copyrights.

"Intellectual property rights" are not the same thing as "property
rights," according the U.S. Supreme Court.

See the discussion of intellectual property in Dowling v. United States
(1985). The Supreme Court explicit holds that criminal copyright
infringement cannot be used as the predicate for a theft offense
(in this case, interstate transportation of stolen property).

This doesn't mean that intellectual property cannot occasionally play the
role of personal property, as when an interest in copyright is devised
by will along with the family car. But you can't "steal" an interest
in copyright--you can only infringe it.


--Mike