Labor as the Basis for Intellectual Property Rights

In debates about the moral foundations of intellectual property, one very popular strand concerns the role of labor as a moral basis for intellectual property rights. This idea has a great deal of intuitive plausibility; but is there a way to make it philosophically precise? That is, does labor prov...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ethical theory and moral practice
Main Author: Cwik, Bryan (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2014
In: Ethical theory and moral practice
Further subjects:B Copyright
B Patents
B Intellectual Property
B Labor
B Property
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Summary:In debates about the moral foundations of intellectual property, one very popular strand concerns the role of labor as a moral basis for intellectual property rights. This idea has a great deal of intuitive plausibility; but is there a way to make it philosophically precise? That is, does labor provide strong reasons to grant intellectual property rights to intellectual laborers? In this paper, I argue that the answer to that question is “yes”. I offer a new view, different from existing labor theories of intellectual property, which I call the productive capacities view. This view gives us a way to make sense of the idea of labor as the basis for intellectual property rights, as well as a tool for critically evaluating existing intellectual property institutions.
ISSN:1572-8447
Contains:Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10677-013-9471-y