Z:gnu-www-ja-gpl-american-way--eafc28-Microsoft says that the GPL is/en

Microsoft says that the GPL is against &ldquo;intellectual property rights.&rdquo; I have no opinion on &ldquo;intellectual property rights,&rdquo; because the term is too broad to have a sensible opinion about. It is a catch-all, covering copyrights, patents, trademarks, and other disparate areas of law; areas so different, in the laws and in their effects, that any statement about all of them at once is surely simplistic. To think intelligently about copyrights, patents or trademarks, you must think about them separately. The first step is declining to lump them together as &ldquo;intellectual property&rdquo;.