50 years ago, the largest publicly-traded corporations were General Motors, Ford, and ExxonMobil; however, as of last year, the largest publicly-traded corporations are Apple, Alphabet (Google), and Microsoft. Once driven by raw materials and manufacturing, modern economies are now driven by information and applications. With ideas being business and thoughts meaning money, the understanding and usage of the term intellectual property has and will only continue to grow.
Broken down, the word intellectual comes from the Old French intellectuel, meaning ‘grasped by the understanding’ (opposed to the physical senses), while propriete is modified Old French for ‘property.’
Though it may seem simplistic, intellectual property can be defined as being a thought that is put into action. And in legal context, the term could be defined as any applied thought towards a project, such as someone’s thoughts put into the writing of a novel, a musician writing a song, or a team’s collaborative effort to build the next in-demand smart phone app.
The phrase “knowledge is power” is attributed to Sir Francis Bacon in 1597; however, if he were alive today, he might say that “knowledge is money.” If the recent massive multi-billion-dollar patent-infringement case between Apple and Samsung regarding design and technology is any indication, intellectual property is a costly endeavour…and big business. According to a 2016 PWC study, the number of patents awarded has declined year over year, yet median damages have increased to $7.3 million, with 80% of cases – appealed, and 53% of decision – amended. Aside from the obvious costs, consideration also should be given to the potential hidden costs – stifled innovation, barriers to entry in a market, the cost of differing or ignored intellectual property laws.
As stated before, intellectual property didn’t drive our grandfather’s economy, but, rather surprisingly, the term has been around for centuries. Believe it or not, the term was first used in the literary journal The Monthly Review in 1769, which wrote that: “What a niggard this Doctor is of his own, and how profuse he is of other people’s intellectual property.” In a legal sense, the first discussion of intellectual property comes from an 1847 work by Charles Woodbury and George Minot called Reports of Cases Argued and Determined by the circuit Court of the United States for the First Circuit, which begins to flesh out the idea by stating that: “Only in this way can we protect intellectual property, the labours of the mind, productions and interests as much a man’s own..as the wheat he cultivates.”
