Intellectual Property: Top Down and Bottom Up
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Description
All too often, lawyers receive bad press for their role in a modem commercial society: They are regarded as the fount of all obstacles to innovation and improvement. Oftentimes I am happy to join a growing fifth column against the excesses of law, notwithstanding my own training and credentials. But although those charges are often warranted, sometimes they are not. What I hope to do in this short chapter is to dispel the illusion that all lawyers are necessarily pitted against productive labor. Accordingly, I want to address the positive legal contribution to setting up the framework in which commercial transactions, especially those in the information age, take place. I shall outline my themes in a somewhat broader context than is appropriate for the technical panels that rightly dominate academic conferences and publications. My self-appointed task therefore is to view intellectual property as part of the broader species of property rights.
Source Publication
Capital For Our Time: The Economic, Legal, and Management Challenges of Intellectual Capital
Source Editors/Authors
Nicholas Imparato
Publication Date
1999
Recommended Citation
Epstein, Richard A., "Intellectual Property: Top Down and Bottom Up" (1999). Faculty Chapters. 410.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/410
