Critics of the term "intellectual property" argue that the increased use of this terminology coincided with a more general shift away from thinking about things like copyright and patent law as specific legal instruments designed to promote the common good and towards a conception of ideas as inviolable property granted by natural law. The terminological shift coincides with the usage of pejorative terms for copyright infringement such as "piracy" and "theft".

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  • Critics of the term "intellectual property" argue that the increased use of this terminology coincided with a more general shift away from thinking about things like copyright and patent law as specific legal instruments designed to promote the common good and towards a conception of ideas as inviolable property granted by natural law. The terminological shift coincides with the usage of pejorative terms for copyright infringement such as "piracy" and "theft". Some critics of intellectual property, such as those in the free culture movement, characterize it as intellectual protectionism or intellectual monopoly, and argue the public interest is harmed by protectionist legislation such as copyright extension, software patents and business method patents. A critique against the idea of intellectual property has been formulated by Eben Moglen in his dotCommunist Manifesto: Some critics reject intellectual property altogether. Richard Stallman argues that "the term systematically distorts and confuses these issues, and its use was and is promoted by those who gain from this confusion. …[It] operates as a catch-all to lump together disparate laws…[which] originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues. " These critics advocate referring to copyrights, patents and trademarks separately, and warn against conflating disparate laws into a collective term. In 2004 the WIPO was criticized in The Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property Organization which argues that WIPO should "focus more on the needs of developing countries, and to view IP as one of many tools for development - not as an end in itself".
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  • June 2008
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  • Eben Moglen dotCommunist Manifesto
  • Society confronts the simple fact that when everyone can possess every intellectual work of beauty and utility--reaping all the human value of every increase of knowledge--at the same cost that any one person can possess them, it is no longer moral to exclude. If Rome possessed the power to feed everyone amply at no greater cost than that of Caesar's own table, the people would sweep Caesar violently away if anyone were left to starve. But the bourgeois system of ownership demands that knowledge and culture be rationed by the ability to pay.
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  • Critics of the term "intellectual property" argue that the increased use of this terminology coincided with a more general shift away from thinking about things like copyright and patent law as specific legal instruments designed to promote the common good and towards a conception of ideas as inviolable property granted by natural law. The terminological shift coincides with the usage of pejorative terms for copyright infringement such as "piracy" and "theft".
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  • Criticism of intellectual property
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