Richard Spinello and Maria Bottis: Understanding the debate on the legal protection of moral intellectual property interests:review essay of A Defense of Intellectual Property Rights

摘要

The thesis of A Defense of Intellectual Property Rights, as the title makes clear, is that some legal protection of intellectual property rights is morally legitimate. At the very start of the book in Chap. 1, however, Spinello and Bottis are careful to describe their thesis in a way that clearly indicates their dissatisfaction with many existing laws protecting intellectual property. Their thesis should not be read as an endorsement of all existing legal protections: they set out their position clearly-a sensible move given that much of the intellectual property literature generates more heated sloganeering than light.1