The Type-Token Distinction and Four Problems with Propertarian IP Justifications

Bibliographic Data

ID21655372
AuthorsWojciech Gamrot (0000-0001-5617-2600, University of Economics in Katowice, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume32
Issue6
Pages1047-1059
Publication date2022-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAxiomathes (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1122-1151 • E-ISSN: 1572-8390
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s10516-021-09564-5
OpenAlexW3164888953
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited16

Propertarian justifications of intellectual property postulate the appropriation of various entities, often called patterns, designs, or technologies. These must be immaterial and should not be confused with material structures that embody them. Hence two classes of objects are distinguished. It is convenient to refer to them as types and tokens. The type must involve a condition defining which material structures should be considered its tokens. For an IP regime to be economically meaningful one must necessarily appropriate types in a way which restricts access to wide classes of similar, non-identical material structures. Therefore, type conditions must be general. They must define, with a margin of tolerance, only certain aspects of the structure, leaving others unspecified. Consequently, the relationship between such types and tokens is of many-to-many variety. The recognition of these facts leads to four problems in justifying intellectual property on propertarian grounds. The first problem is to demonstrate possession of the type in the pre-legal situation. The second one is to explain, why boundaries of an appropriated type should be placed in a particular location. The third problem is to avoid claim deadlocks resulting from conflicts of rights generated by separate overlapping types. The fourth problem is to justify why ownership of the type should entail the control over other separate entities—that is tokens. In the propertarian framework grounded in the pre-legal state of nature, satisfactory solutions do not seem to have been proposed for any of these four problems

Algorithm · Appropriation · Computer security · Epistemology · Intellectual property · Law and economics · Linguistics · Security token · Sociology · Computer Science · Copyright and Intellectual Property · Intellectual Property and Patents · Law, AI, and Intellectual Property · Artificial Intelligence

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