Owning the Intangible/Introduction

This is a draft introduction, intended to serve as a placeholder until the real introduction is written by a member of the class.

Owning the Intangible. A simple, but perhaps puzzling, phrase. We all know about owning tangible objects. This is "my book", "my house", even "my partner". But it's not always clear what it means to own less tangible things. Can this be "my idea", "my process", "my character", even "my expression of someone else's idea" or "my news story"? We may have informal senses of ownership, but the laws governing such ownership are much more complicated than the laws governing ownership of physical objects.

Over the past few months, a group of twelve students, one faculty member, and associated collaborators have been exploring notions of ownership in the twenty-first century. They have considered three main areas of intellectual property law: Patent, Trademark, and Copyright. In this volume, you will find the essays they have written on particular problems and domains of IP law that they've identified as being particularly interesting.

Samuel A. Rebelsky, Grinnell, 2010