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Misappropriation as a Third Intellectual Property Paradigm

1994; Columbia Law School; Volume: 94; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1123147

1945-2268

Dennis S. Karjala,

Law, AI, and Intellectual Property

The digital age brings with it increasing varieties of products that are costly to produce but arguably vulnerable to cheap and rapid copying. An absence of legal protection acts as a disincentive to investment in the development of such products. Since patent law protects only nonobvi? ous advances in applied functionality and traditional copyright law abjures the protection of function, products of human intellectual activity falling outside these two primary regimes of protection have historically been left to their fate under trade secret and unfair competition law or, failing that, to the vagaries of the free market. The question before us is whether a third general paradigm can be constructed for products inadequately or inappropriately protected by patent or copyright law that bet? ter balances creation incentives against free use and efficient development.