The USA Intellectual Property Law - Essay Example

The different segments of intellectual property law include trademarks, patents, trade secrets, and copyright. These four form the core of intellectual property law.

According to Colston and Middleton (2005), intellectual property law derives its essence from human creativity. It is from the need to protect human innovations and creations that Intellectual property finds its meaning. Intellectual property is a term used to refer to creations of human intelligence that contain commercial value and which receive legal protection. Intellectual property helps the right owners to stop others from taking their creations. This effectively reserves the exploitation and presentation of those creations for the right owners.

Colston and Middleton (2005) point out that intellectual property dates back historically to the times of the Romans. The Romans are said to have used marks on pottery to denote its maker and a Venetian law of 1474 established 10-year privileges for those inventing new machines. The application of intellectual property in these early times underscores the importance of the concept in our economy. The Industrial and Transport revolutions which marked an increase in the number of new ideas gave Intellectual property increased significance.

This is because more and more people came up with novel ideas which needed legal protection to enable the inventors to benefit economically from their inventions. Intellectual property law is said to have contributed significantly to the number of ideas that were borne at the time as more and more people perceived a direct benefit in coming up with creative ideas. According to Lindberg (2008), intellectual property is at the heart of our society, a building block of the economy. Proponents of Intellectual property argue that IP is at the heart of great innovations and creative ideas that have helped to shape the economy.

This was especially the case in the earlier periods of the industrial revolution. Inventors were motivated to come up with ideas because they knew that their creations would be legally protected and any economic benefits that could be accrued would first come to them. The promise of the benefit to be accrued acted as a powerful motivator that moved people to want to come up with ideas that could generate financial returns for them. This had a positive effect on people’s creativity as a whole.

However, there are critics of intellectual property who perceive that Intellectual property law is of little consequence. These critics argue that knowledge cannot be owned (Lindberg, 2008). An attempt to attach ownership to knowledge is an attempt in futility as it hinders the very thing that it seeks to protect. Indeed, an attempt to attach rights to knowledge restricts our range of creative expression. Critics argue that no idea is entirely new but inventions result from the modification of other ideas.

As such, putting restrictions on the use of ideas that have already been generated also results in fewer modifications of ideas thus stunting innovations. In totality, the gains that are attributable to Intellectual property laws far outweigh the negative effects. This perhaps explains the reason why Intellectual property law has been practiced for centuries up until the modern day.