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Intellectual Property and Copyright aren't quite the same thing. The IP is the idea, whereas the copyright is the specific recipe.

So in my mind, the equivalent would be using your learned cooking skills for another restaurant while working at a Michelin restaurant. They both serve food (competing or related industry), but while the dishes are different, the techniques to create them come from the same source.

I wouldn't expect a Michelin restaurant to stop someone cooking in their spare time, just that they can't copy their exact dishes in part or full and compete with them.



Intellectual Property isn't really a thing in itself. It's a vague collection of a couple of different concepts, including Copyright, Patents and Trademarks.

Those are three very different kinds of temporary monopolies granted by the government, but the people who promote the phrase "intellectual property" want them to be considered as not a government-granted monopoly on a certain kind of business, but as a natural form of property comparable to physical property, which it really isn't.


Perhaps we could try to rebrand IP as "Innovation Protections"?


Good idea but will not pass the parliementarians.


"Property" isn't natural. It's defined by law.


> Intellectual Property and Copyright aren't quite the same thing. The IP is the idea, whereas the copyright is the specific recipe.

No. Intellectual property is property.

One cannot "own" an idea, but one can own a copyright; copyright (along with trademark and patent) is a form of IP.


> Intellectual Property and Copyright aren't quite the same thing. The IP is the idea, whereas the copyright is the specific recipe.

No. "Intellectual Property" is an umbrella term for some very different concepts -- copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets (maybe I'm forgetting some).

You can't copyright an idea, but you might be able to patent it. It's only intellectual property if you do.


Plant variety rights.

The European Commission even published a document trying to 'reinterpret' the meaning of IP, they ended up redefining what was 'intellectual property' by making their own maximalist list of rights, including the ones that don't exist yet.


If a chef makes a cookery vlog, at home, should the restaurant that employs them get the proceeds?




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