The Santa Monica Philosophy Meetup – When should ideas be owned?

Hello Philosophy Fans!

UPDATE: we have a topic for the Meetup, this Sunday, March 22 at 5 PM – 7 PM Pacific Time. We're meeting on zoom this month; shortly before the meeting starts, I'll send a Zoom invitation with the link and some discussion notes.

If your plans to attend have changed, please update your RSVP.

The winner of the email vote and the topic for Sunday is:

WHEN SHOULD IDEAS AND OTHER INTANGIBLES BE ELIGIBLE FOR OWNERSHIP? Should people own ideas, and if so, which kinds of ideas? What principles justify ownership of intellectual property? Do individuals who improve upon ideas deserve, as the fruits of their mental labor, property rights over what they create? Do intellectual property rights incentivize innovation? Do intellectual property rights restrict access to knowledge that should be part of the common human experience, and thereby limit follow-on innovation?

“Intellectual property is generally characterized as non-physical property that is the product of original thought,” according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Current legal systems generally distinguish between a mere idea (which cannot be owned) and the expression or application of that idea (which can be protected by patents or copyrights). U.S. law allows ownership of, for example, musical lyrics/scores, designs of a device, and even catch-phrases. Other ideas, though, cannot be owned, such as math proofs, scientific formulas, algorithms, and philosophical concepts. Does U.S. law get it right in judging which ideas can and cannot be owned?

To make the issue personal, do you own your identity? Your user data, your biometric data, or your DNA? Do you own your digital avatar after you die?

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READINGS for the topic – I have two readings for you this time, a short one and a longer, more scholarly one. Inspire and clarify your thinking on the issues by reading them!

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/business-studies/importance-and-types-of-intellectual-property-rights-ipr/
From the Geeksforgeeks wiki site, the 2-page long article, Importance and Types of Intellectual Property Rights, gives a summary of the types of and reasons for the ownership of ideas.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intellectual-property/
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Intellectual Property aims for a comprehensive and impartial explanation of the conceptual issues underlying the ownership of ideas, as well as the arguments for and against it. It's one of the less technical and less jargon-laden articles in the Encyclopedia. Written by Philosophers Adam Moore and Ken Himma, it is 20 pages long.
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