Z:gnu-www-ja-boldrin-levine--06a290-=3Ca href=3D"/philosophy/words-to-/en

The term &ldquo;intellectual property&rdquo; is biased and spreads confusion. The bias is easy to see&mdash;by calling copyright and patents and trademarks &ldquo;property&rdquo;, it leads people to think that criticizing them is &ldquo;opposing property rights&rdquo;. The confusion is less evident: by lumping copyright and patents and trademarks together, it leads people to treat them as one thing, to ignore their large differences and consider them as a single issue in terms of their meager similarities.