Z:gnu-www-ja-copyright-and-globalization--b30855-Second, it encourages over-gen/en

Second, it encourages over-generalization. Intellectual property is a catch-all for several different legal systems with independent origins such as, copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets and some other things as well. They are almost completely different; they have nothing in common. But people who hear the term &ldquo;intellectual property&rdquo; are led to a false picture where they imagine that there's a general principle of intellectual property that was applied to specific areas, so they assume that these various areas of the law are similar. This leads not only to confused thinking about what is right to do, it leads people to fail to understand what the law actually says because they suppose that the copyright law and patent law and trademark law are similar, when, in fact, they are totally different.