The "intellectual property" misnomer

[drs]

"Cliff Wells" <clifford.wells at comcast.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.1058029899.16454.python-list at python.org...
> On Fri, 2003-07-11 at 20:30, Ben Finney wrote:
> > On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 22:47:21 -0400, Tim Peters wrote:
> > > Ben Finney wrote:
> > >> Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > >> > The PSF holds the intellectual property rights for Python
> > >> Ugh.  Please don't propagate this ridiculous, meaningless term.
> > >
> > > Guido isn't writing a treatise on the law, he's briefly explaining
> > > (part of) what the PSF does.
> >
> > The term he used doesn't explain anything, and only confuses.

* * *

> > People may have an assumption about what is meant by the term, but they
> > are almost certainly wrong, since the fields of law that are sometimes
> > lumped together by that term have almost nothing in common.

As the holder of a degree in the law and as a programmer, I would like to
diverge from the rest of this argument by saying that this is flatly wrong.
Patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret have much in common which
causes them to be lumped into one convenient category.  Perhaps the most
important thing is that they are all created from intellectual endeavors.
They are the things which are not plots of land or buildings, i.e. they are
the things which are not what lawyers call "real property."  Whether one
thinks there should be property rights in intellectual creation is one
thing, but suggesting that simply because there are differences in those
rights or in how they are granted implies that there are not similarities in
the law which governs or in how it is interpreted is logically incorrect.

> No, they are most certainly not wrong.  Most people using Python have
> probably at least perused the license.  Having done so, I doubt that
> they need to have it spelled out every time it is mentioned.
>
> > There is nothing useful indicated by the term "intellectual property
> > rights", because it presumes there is some commonality between fields of
> > law that deal with different intellectual concepts, impose different
> > restrictions, and presume different rights.
>
> That's like saying the word "food" is useless because there's nothing in
> common between a sandwich and a bowl of rice.

Or more to the point, it is like the OP's use of the word lawyer.  As
someone who has primarily studied IP, Antitrust and Constitutional Law, I
don't want to be lumped into the same category with someone who does
transactional work or who files divorce papers, yet the term lawyer does
just this.  One should be careful about chastising other for using terms
which are too general as that is the nature of spoken language.  Words are
imprecise, and category words like "Intellectual Property" or "lawyer" or
"food" are not tuples which are iterated over in conversation.

* * *

> > > I don't think pedantic verbosity makes it any clearer, but may mislead
> > > due to omission.
> >
> > And using a term that attempts to blanket wildly different legal rights
> > is *not* misleading due to omission?

No, this is not how this works.  It is very common in the law to make a list
or use a term which is illustrative. The Latin is "Noscitur a sociis" which
means to interpret the general to be similar to specifics in a series.  So,
we all know what the series is here, and it is, as mentioned by others,
clearer to not list all of the specifics as this will cause people to search
for omissions -- "Expressio unius" is the term there.

-drs

IGWOS (it goes without saying), IANALATINLA (i am not a lawyer and this is
not legal advice).