Resnik (2003). A Pluralistic account of Intellectual property. Journal of Business Ethics, 46(4), Sept, 319-335.
Resnik (2003) reviews six different approaches to intellectual property. It then argues that none of these accounts provide an adequate justification of intellectual property laws and policies because (1) there are many different types of intellectual property, (2) a variety of incommensurable values play a role in the justification of intellectual property. The best approach to intellectual property is to assess and balance competing
moral values in light of the particular facts and circumstances.
3. Accounts of intellectual property, p. 322
3.1. The libertarian approach, p. 322
Locke conceived of a world in which there is common property (or nature) given to all people. People are justified in claiming ownership of the products of their labor because they have mixed their labor with those products, they have removed them from nature, and they have added value to them. Property rights therefore protect individual interests relating to the investment of labor.
3.2. The utilitarian approach, p. 323
3.3. Hegel's self-expression theory, p. 326
Many political philosophers and legal theorists have drawn inspiration from Hegel’s (1770-1831) ideas about freedom, self-expression, and property. In the English version of Philosophy of Right (1991), Hegel argues that property provides a function for the development, expression, and realization of one’s self. A person must define oneself in relation to the physical and social world, which is a world that is separate from the self. A person can define oneself by manipulating and controlling objects in this separate world. In order to ensure that people can have control over objects, society should recognize property rights.
Since human freedom requires that a person be able to express oneself in the world and develop a life plan, property rights can be justified on the grounds that they are a necessary means of realizing human freedom. A person exercises his freedom (or autonomy) by controlling physical object as well as information. Denying a person control over property is one way of restricting that person’s autonomy.
Hegel’s theory develops an important insight about property: we need property to express ourselves in the world. The self-expression theory fits examples where the property in question reflects a person’s unique knowledge, creativity, insight, skill, or genius. If a person has poured oneself into the object, then the object should be his property. Some examples of these highly personal creations include poems, diaries, paintings, songs, sculptures, as well as gardens, houses, rooms, and musical instruments.
The rational aspect of property is to be found not in the satisfaction of needs but in the superseding of mere subjectivity of personality. Not until he has property does the person exist as reason. Even if this first reality of my freedom is in an external thing and is thus a poor kind of reality, the abstract personality in its very immediacy can have no other existence than in the determination of immediacy. (Hegel, 1991, subsection 41)
The self-expression theory makes the most sense in single-author works. Although Besnki (2003) argues that self-expression theory is unable to provide us with a satisfactory account of collaborative works, this proposition is doubtful in the field of finance. Most important papers of finance are produced by cooperation, such as Modigliani and Miller (1958), Miller and Modigliani (1961), Black and Scholes (1973), and Kahneman and Tversky (1979). Except F. Black (1938-1995) and A. Tversky (1937-1996) passing away early, these authors received Nobel Prize in Economics for the academic contribution who conduct in collaboration with colleagues.
Hegelian theory would imply the absurd conclusion that we can asset property rights over almost anything, including the way we breathe air (Besnik, 2003, p. 326).
