US takes the pro-AIDS stance

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http://www.bilaterals.org/spip.php?article19759&lang=en

The article misuses the term "intellectual property". In this topic's case it should be talking about patents.

Patents are intellectual property. They are, in point of fact, the first type of intellectual property.

In English law, patent protected existed as a matter of Royal Prerogative as early as the beginning of the 14th century. The very name comes from the instrument that was used to issue them, "Letters Patent." These continued to be a prerogative matter until Parliament spoke on the subject during the reign of James I. This only served to restrict the prerogative, and it would take another 80 years or so for patent law to be codified in statute. This statute forms the basis of patent law in all Common Law jurisdicitions.

The earliest civil law protections of patents are likely Italian, either in Florence or Venice during the 15th century.

Copyright is realtively newer. It was first conceived in English law, appearing in statute in the early 18th century (but only for printed works). There is considerable debate whether authors held any common law copyright that pre-existed statutory recognition. The broader application of copyright to other created works has been a gradual expansion, and the international recognition of copyrights had to await the Berne Convention of 1886.

"Free trade agreements" with Vietnam and Malaysia? Barf.

bigot,

you know not of what vietnam or what malaysia you are talking.

There is no such thing as Intellectual property. It is a propaganda term meant to confuse people by blending together three things that are completely different, have different objectives and need different kinds of fixes. Patents, copyright and trademarks are different issues and branding them together as IP is the signature of lobby groups.

Denial of the existence of intellectual property is sheer, obstinate ignorance. There is no question that copyrights, patents and trademarks are all valuable assets that can be treated in the same fashion as any other personal property. They can be bought, sold, leased or licensed, used as consideration in contract, inhereted and extinguished. In this sense they are clearly property. They also share the characteristics that they are intangible, and that they are interests in the creative effort of individuals.

This is not an indiscriminate "lumping together" of unrelated interests. Other intangible property is excluded (intangible interests in land, or intangible contractual rights, for example).

Now you may well believe that current regimes for the regulation of intellectual property are misguided, or fail to serve public interests--and that is a perfectly reasonable position to take. But denialism makes you look ignorant rather than reasonable.

The concept of property itself is socially constructed. It's not as if there's any inherent attribute of a tract of land that makes it a particular person's property.