The Property Rights Movement and Intellectual Property

The previous issue of Regulation contains a provocative attempt by University of California, Berkeley law professor Peter Menell to discredit what he calls the property rights movement (PRM) for its supposed "absolutist" stance on intellectual property. As part of the article, he asserts that I participate in (or perhaps even lead) a movement that poses a profound danger to the efficient operation of our complex system of intellectual property law, especially as it relates to patents and copyrights. In this article, I argue that this characterization is inaccurate. I believe that there are rights over intellectual property, but they differ in important ways from rights over real property.

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