Intellectual property is knowledge or expression that is owned
by an individual or a corporate entity. Intellectual property
has three customary domains: copyright, patent, and trademark. A fourth designation, trade secrets, has emerged as a
legal construct over the past two centuries. The term intellectual property became popular in legal doctrine, in congressional debate, and with U.S. computer specialists in the early
1980s. Europeans first used the term in the late nineteenth
century to describe several disciplines of creative arts and design using a single, broad definition.
Intellectual Propery in the Early Republic
The identification and cataloging of ideas across borders and
within trading zones through legalized intellectual property
protection grew from English tradition and slowly infiltrated
common law in the American colonies in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. Federal standards for intellectual
property protections expanded with the adoption of the U.S.
Constitution in 1789. Interest in the protection of specific
goods and services flourished in the nineteenth century as
the American consumer market grew, new technologies
spawned new products, and advertising methods promoted
unique brands. Powerful trading organizations and lobbying
groups called for international guidelines designed to mediate legal barriers to knowledge and expression. A growing
business press that recorded the economic impact of invention and chronicled the entrepreneurial development of
products from inception to incarnation fortified these efforts
in nineteenth-century America.
U.S. copyright law protects original forms of expression,
such as the movie Star Wars or the play Rent. Patent law protects commercial designs or formulas produced by inventors
and is designed to dissuade other individuals or firms from
copying their work. Patent law protects inventions and
processes (via “utility” patents) and ornamental designs (via
“design” patents). Patent protections developed long before
copyrights became controversial. The first American patent
was granted by a special act of the Massachusetts colonial
government in 1641 for the development of a saltworks. At
the beginning of the twenty-first century, the United States
granted utility patents for a period of 17 years and design
patents for 14 years. Once the patent for an invention or design has expired, anyone can make, use, or sell the invention
or design in question.
Trademarks and service marks include words, names,
symbols, or devices used by manufacturers of goods and
providers of services to identify their goods and services and
to distinguish them from those manufactured and sold by
others. The brand Taco Bell or the contours of a BMW hood
ornament are examples of trademark designations. Historically, U.S. trademark law has not restricted the use of a trademark that is unlikely to cause confusion, mistake, or deception among consumers. However, the 1996 Lanham Act
introduced legislation that protected famous marks from
uses that dilute their distinctiveness, even in the absence of
any likelihood of confusion or competition. Marks qualify as
famous if they promote such powerful associations in the
consumer’s mind that even noncompeting uses can impinge
on their value. Before November 1989 a U.S. trademark’s
owner could file a trademark application only after he or she
had actually used the trademark in commerce. U.S. law allows a person who has a bona fide intention to use a trademark in commerce to apply to register the trademark. Certificates of federal trademark registration usually remain in
effect for ten years. A federal registration may be renewed for
any number of successive ten-year terms as long as the mark
is still in use in commerce. The duration of state registration
varies.
Trade-secret law only protects information that a company has tried but failed to conceal from competitors. Unique
formulas for soft drinks and confidential marketing strategies
are examples of trade secrets. Unlike the law in other areas of
intellectual property, such as copyright or patent law, tradesecret law imposes liability only when the appropriator acquires, reveals, or uses secrets in a wrongful manner. A wide
variety of materials may be protected by trade-secret law, including the following types of technical and business information: customer lists, designs, instructional methods, manufacturing processes, document-tracking processes, and
formulas for producing products. Inventions and processes
Intellectual Property
not patentable might also receive protection under tradesecret law. Patent applicants generally rely on trade-secret law
to protect their inventions while the patent applications are
pending.
Framers of the U.S. Constitution reviewed over 200 years
of English law while formulating language addressing the
rights of ideas and inventions. Merging European common
law principles with American policies designed to promote
individual rights proved difficult. In 1557 Queen Mary I assigned all printing and book sales to a single guild, the Stationers’ Company. Guild members purchased manuscripts
from writers and held the exclusive right to print and sell
them forever. The Crown also granted exclusive rights to
print the works of deceased writers, and the guild censored
books it considered seditious or heretical. England’s guild
monopoly frustrated several writers, and eventually, Parliament withdrew royal monopolies. Stationers’ Company officials responded by purchasing perpetual licenses to manuscripts. By the eighteenth century the English considered the
independent rights for authors a legitimate protection, and
Parliament enacted the Statute of Anne, the first modern
copyright law, in 1710. The act gave authors the rights to their
work and limited the duration of protection to 14 years, a
standard unchallenged until late in the twentieth century in
Europe and the United States. The guild spent decades trying
to recapture its legal monopoly by embarking on a series of
lawsuits that maintained the Crown could not strip businesses of their property after 14 years or any other arbitrary
length of time. In 1774 the House of Lords clarified that authors and publishers had no absolute property rights over
their works. Members determined that rights to products of
the mind remained temporary and should be in the public
domain after a short period of time, available for use by all.
Framers of the U.S. Constitution considered the merits of
independent state laws when assessing whether to define clear
national policy or ignore provisions for intellectual property.
Before 1787 state assemblies could grant rights to inventions
or ideas, but South Carolina was the only state that passed
general legislation allowing grants of patents without special
acts of the legislature. Although discarding the ineffective Articles of Confederation and proceeding with a drafted version
of the Constitution at the Constitutional Convention in
Philadelphia, beginning on May 14, 1787, participants reviewed inconsistent decisions in respect to intellectual property. When searching for samples or templates of how to incorporate ideas and inventions as protected commodities,
they found that England showcased a more consistent policy
than any single American state.
The debate did not address provisions for ideas, inventions, or any other language now associated with intellectual
property until the Committee Detail submitted its recommendations. Virginia’s James Madison harked back to English law on August 18, 1787, and suggested adding the right
“to secure to literary authors their copyrights for a limited
time” (Debates in the Federal Constitution). On the same day,
South Carolina delegate Charles Pinckney recommended a
provision “to grant patents for useful inventions” and “to secure to authors exclusive rights” (Debates in the Federal Constitution). On August 31 the assembly referred these proposals and others to a committee composed of one member
from each state. On September 5, 1787, the committee, which
included Madison, reported that Congress should have the
power “to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by
securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” The
clause surfaced verbatim in what became Article 1, Section 8,
Clause 8 of the Constitution.
Madison’s writings demonstrated his belief that federal
oversight of ideas and inventions remained a necessary evil as
the burgeoning national economy forced goods to pass across
borders efficiently. His theories differed from those of
Thomas Jefferson, who remained more interested in ensuring
that inventions became available to the public. “The copyright of authors has been solemnly adjudged in Great Britain
to be a right of common law. . . . The public good fully coincides . . . with the claims of individuals,” Madison lectured
(Introduction to the Debates). He believed that state leaders
were poised to give up control of knowledge and ideas for the
good of federalism.“The States cannot separately make effectual provision for either of the cases, and most of them have
anticipated the decision of this point by law passed at the instance of Congress,” he reminded his compatriots.
The pursuit of protection for intellectual property symbolized a national debate stirred by Thomas Jefferson,
Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison during the late
eighteenth century, after the American Revolution. As American lawmakers moved away from governance via a loose
confederation of states managed by separate laws and added
centralized control relying on English common law, a fusion
of local and national intellectual property protections
emerged. The framers of the Constitution pursued a middle
ground that protected state autonomy while simultaneously
promoting centralized banking, international trade, and interstate commerce. The result of this middle passage resulted
in a collision of values and legal interpretations that shifted
some power to state authorities and some to federal managers. Judicial interpretation expanded the federal oversight
of copyrights and trademarks as the national economy grew
and private investment in distant trade surged. American
writers discovered new markets for their works, and large,
private corporations prospered. Market expansion led independent trade groups and business interests to seek even
broader protection for intellectual property ownership. At
the twilight of the eighteenth century, the compromise position of part state and part federal protection articulated by
American delegates to the Constitution Convention had
tilted toward a federal approach. Madison’s call to “encourage
by premiums and provisions, the advancement of useful
knowledge and discoveries” had trumped Jefferson’s conclusion that products of the human mind “cannot, in nature, be
a subject of property” (Introduction to the Debates).
Building from the language of England’s Statute of Anne,
the U.S. Copyright Act of May 31, 1790, provided creators of
books, maps, and charts a 14-year copyright, with the option
of renewing for another 14 years. The act became the first
major legislative form of intellectual property protection in
the United States. On February 3, 1831, the first general revision of the copyright law added music as a category of works
protected against unauthorized printing and vending. The
first term of copyright could also extend to 28 years, with the
privilege of renewal for a term of 14 years. Until the middle
of the nineteenth century, U.S. copyright owners enjoyed little more than protection against verbatim copying of language. A federal circuit court rejected the claim of Harriet
Beecher Stowe that a German translation of Uncle Tom’s
Cabin infringed her copyright in 1853, finding the Constitution shielded literal text alone. Only 17 years later did Congress include translations (thereby allowing for legal interpretation of story lines or ideas borrowed from a written
work in addition to literal copying) in the revised Copyright
Act of July 8, 1870. The new law protected authors from infringement related to close approximations of plots or use of
characters to create an unauthorized sequel, beginning a period of more liberal interpretation, championed by artists
such as Mark Twain.
Intellectual Property in the Gilded Age
Copyright law was further refined in Baker v. Selden (1879),
when the Supreme Court ruled that describing a system of
accounting in a textbook did not confer copyright protection
on the system itself. The Court wrote: “Recurring to the case
before us, we observe that Charles Selden, by his books, explained and described a peculiar system of book-keeping,
and illustrated his method by means of ruled lines and blank
columns, with proper headings on a page, or on successive
pages. Now, whilst no one has a right to print or publish his
book, or any material part thereof, as a book intended to convey instruction in the art, any person may practice and use
the art itself, which he has described and illustrated therein.
The use of the art is a totally different thing from a publication of the book explaining it.”
As the Supreme Court fine-tuned copyright law, established writers lobbied for continued protection. Mark Twain
noted the publishers would not pay for works produced by
unrecognized authors when they were not even required to
pay famous authors for their works. He astutely co-opted
Jefferson’s public domain argument by suggesting that extending rights to major authors remained critical for preserving American icons and values. More recently,
spokespersons at Disney and other corporations emulated
his approach when advocating long-term control of icons
such as Mickey Mouse. “It is not merely a question of copyright. . . . It is a question of maintaining in America a national literature, of preserving national sentiment, national
politics, national thought, and national morals,” announced
Twain in the New York Times. On July 1, 1909, a third general
revision of the copyright law became effective and extended
the renewal term from 14 to 28 years. Generally, copyright
standards have continued to be extended in respect to duration in America, and in the 1980s and 1990s, copyright doctrine also included detailed legal language addressing computer programs. The December 1, 1990, Computer Software
Rental Amendment Act granted the owner of a copyright in
computer programs exclusive rights to authorize or prohibit
the rental, lease, or lending of the program for direct or indirect commercial purposes.
The U.S. government enacted the first federal patent law
on April 10, 1790. The new law placed complete power over
the granting of patents in the hands of the secretary of state,
the secretary of war, and the attorney general. Secretary of
State Thomas Jefferson personally examined each patent application filed. As the number of patents submitted for analysis increased, federal officials became overwhelmed. On February 11, 1793, Congress passed a new patent law, intended to
place the burden of evaluating the validity of the claim of
original invention on the courts and keep Cabinet officers,
who lacked time, from having to examine patent submissions. The new law remained in effect until 1836 and introduced the U.S. Patent Office. An inventor simply submitted a
description of the invention, drawings, and a model and paid
a fee. In 1842 Congress extended the reach of the patent
statute to cover “new and original designs for articles of manufacture.” The new act engaged inventor interest in various
types of goods that had received little attention before that
time. Products such as display racks received protection. In
1849 control over the Patent Office was transferred from the
Department of State to the newly created Department of the
Interior. The 1952 Patent Act made only general revisions to
the law, not substantive changes.
Prior to the Civil War, manufacturers infrequently used
trademarks on general merchandise. As a result, members of
Congress paid little attention to the trademark issue. However, lobbying by private business interests began to reduce
local government oversight of trade within cities and counties. New York State became the epicenter of this shift toward
universal American trademark applications. Until the 1840s,
the inspection of traded goods in New York cities was treated
as a monopoly of the state government. By the middle of the
decade, 372 inspectors and 109 weighers, who were responsible for part of the inspection process, occupied 22 percent of
the 2,238 political appointee positions filled by the New York
governor, and state inspections raised over 30 percent more
revenues than state taxes. In response, business leaders lobbied for marks that would signal acceptable products, requiring no review or inspection. State leaders joined the businesspeople who claimed that the collection of inspection fees
led to grotesque patronage and remained akin to imposing a
commercial surcharge on goods and trade. Laws passed in
1844 and 1845 forbade private inspection in the city and
county of New York and in Kings County. In 1845 New York
became the first state to legislate private trademark protection for a variety of goods and services, enabling voluntary
inspections overseen by company officials and municipal authorities. New York abolished all inspections and weighings
in November 1846.
Federal trademark legislation surfaced in 1870 based on
the copyright clause of the Constitution. Averill Paints received the first mark under this act. However, the Supreme
Court declared the measure unconstitutional in 1879 on the
grounds that it impermissibly affected intrastate affairs. The
Court held that the basis of any trademark rested on the
commerce clause, which allowed for regulation of interstate
commerce, not intrastate commerce. In response, New York
business leaders sprang into action again, now calling for uniform trademark guidelines at the national level to reduce any
trade restraints across the United States. Twelve New York industrialists founded the U.S. Trademark Association (USTA)
in 1878 and lobbied for enactment of the Trademark Act of
1881, arguing that manufacturers should be able to protect
their brands as a necessity of commerce when engaging in
foreign trade.
By 1887 the association expanded its activities by publishing The Bulletin to circulate articles of interest to trademark
owners and law students. Interaction with elected officials
and campaign donations resulted in USTA’s president, Francis Forbes, being appointed by President William McKinley
to head a commission empowered to revise statutes relating
to patents, trade, and other marks. The commission’s report,
submitted to Congress in 1900, made recommendations that
formed the basis of the Trademark Act of 1905, a law adopted
on the principle of prior ownership and use. Companies establishing marks in the previous ten years received authorization to consolidate ownership through procedural registration. The new law precipitated 16,224 applications for the
year, nearly a sevenfold increase from 1904. In 1906, USTA
officials expanded the geographic scope of their advice and
initiated trademark planning in other nations. Officials in Argentina were counseled to liberalize national law, and the association drafted trademark law for Ecuador in 1908, a model
later used in other South American jurisdictions.
Intellectual Property in the Twentieth Century
The 1946 Trademark Act introduced legislation governing
federal trademark registration. Thereafter, USTA officials
launched a major campaign to reduce the effect of mandatory state trademark registration, which resulted in the 1949
Model State Trademark Bill, approved by the National Association of Secretaries of State and the Council of State Governments. Enactment in 46 states confirmed that all jurisdictions would incorporate uniform registration practices and
share information. American state and federal trademarks
shifted toward national, rather than regional, data management. In 1993 the USTA recast itself as the International
Trademark Association and claimed to have approximately
3,000 members drawn from 110 countries.
Private business representatives did not have to work as
hard when advocating legal protections for trade secrets.
Nineteenth-century legal decisions regarding the shipment of
goods established that packages, cases, and vessels containing
commodities could shield their identity. Courts also mandated that imitations of goods as diverse as team uniforms
and stationery remained unacceptable. Likewise, competitive
companies could not distribute goods that caused consumer
confusion or “tarnished” private trademarks. In the Dow
Jones case, the Supreme Court of Illinois held that the
Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) could not develop a stock
index futures contract keyed to the Dow Jones Industrial Average without first obtaining permission from the company
that created the market index. Officials at the CBOT used
similar reasoning to their advantage as they successfully argued that the organization’s price quotations were “like a
trade secret,” thereby suppressing the sharing of insider pricing with potential competitors. Unlike patent, copyright, and
trademark law, no private federal civil cause of action existed
in U.S. trade-secret law. In 1979 the American Bar Association approved the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA) as a
model for states to adopt.
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century American popular literature, commerce, and shopping introduced copyrighted
books, patented industrial designs, and trademarked consumer goods to millions of consumers across the country.
Business journals, engineering specialists, corporate officers,
and government officials helped inventors and producers understand the legal terminology serving as the foundation of
intellectual property. Marketing efforts ensured that consumers became aware of new brands as they entered the national marketplace, and independent inventors received inspiration from firms such as Munn and Company, the parent
firm of Scientific American Magazine. Munn officials developed the first professional services organization in the United
States dedicated to submitting patent applications. Thomas
Edison, the quintessential American inventor and protector
of special designs and schemes, was said to never miss an
issue of Scientific American as a young boy. In 1877 he entered
the New York offices of the magazine and demonstrated an
early version of his phonograph to great fanfare.
Scientific American captured readers such as Edison by
promoting the captivating nature of scientific curiosity and
invention. Dreams and success stories dominated every issue,
and creative capitalist enterprise abounded. The masthead of
the first edition stated: “This paper is especially entitled to the
patronage of Mechanics and Manufactures, being the only
paper in America, devoted to the interest of those classes.”
Former painter, schoolmaster, and inventor Rufus Porter
launched the magazine on August 28, 1845, and sold the publication to Alfred Ely Beach and Orson Desaix Munn the following year for a small profit.
Beach grew up as the son of Moses Yale Beach, who owned
the New York Sun and developed the rag-cutting machine for
the manufacture of paper. Munn, who had been one of Alfred’s classmates at Monson Academy, ran a general store in
Monson, Massachusetts, at the time of the purchase. Together, the two men increased the magazine’s circulation to
10,000 by 1848, 20,000 by 1852, and 30,000 by 1853. The
journal championed the growth in the number of people
working in technology across the United States and promoted Munn and Company as the experts necessary for
planning and protecting inventors’ ideas and design concepts.
At the end of 1845, the U.S. Patent Office had issued 4,347
patents throughout its history. By 1890 the number of patents
accepted (approximately one-third as many additional applications were denied) by the same office numbered 402,166,
and over 20,000 were being granted each year. During the
early 1860s, Munn and Company generated one-third of all
patents issued in America. By 1924 the firm’s number of
patents exceeded 200,000, more than one-seventh of all
patents ever issued by the Patent Office to that time. Firm officials became active lobbyists. Throughout the 1850s, Beach,
412 Intellectual Property
who secured several patents of his own (including one for a
typewriter enhancement for the blind), traveled to the District of Columbia every two weeks to personally deliver applications. Munn and Company also opened a branch office
in Washington, across the street from the Patent Office. Personnel from the firm wrote letters of advice to Congress
members and U.S. presidents, and they tutored government
officials interested in technology. The company also published several editions of a handbook specific to patent law. A
former patent commissioner even became one of the company’s attorneys.
As independent inventors became more sophisticated,
corporate leaders followed suit. They received aid from court
rulings that further eroded municipal controls over trade and
business transactions. Courts ruled that cities could no
longer regulate the hours of business within their confines.
The Supreme Court decision in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886) finalized a legal revolution that resulted
in corporations being declared “persons” entitled to the constitutional rights and protections guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. Through the emergence of “substantive
due process,” corporations achieved “natural” economic status as ordinary, private, constitutionally protected enterprises
rather than special, public creations of the state. Nineteenthcentury corporate officials used these new legal findings to
justify closely held control over ideas and inventions. For instance, the DuPont Company developed postemployment
covenants designed to prevent the dissemination of knowledge, thereby restricting the spread of workplace knowledge
outside the job site. When courts upheld these contracts,
company officials drafted comprehensive agreements stipulating that firms legally owned the rights to any employeedeveloped ideas.
Nineteenth-century U.S. efforts to develop policy relating
to ideas and knowledge-based products were consistently influenced by international advocates for protection. Many foreign exhibitors refused to attend the International Exhibition
of Inventions in Vienna in 1873 because they were afraid
their ideas would be stolen and exploited commercially in
other countries. Ten years later, the Paris Convention for the
Protection of Industrial Property led to the major international treaty of the same name, which was designed to help
individuals in one nation obtain protection in other countries for their inventions, usually patents, trademarks, and industrial designs. The Paris Convention became codified in
1884 with 14 members, and it created an international bureau designed to organize policy across the world. The 1886
Bern Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic
Works enhanced this effort. The meeting allowed nationals of
member states to plan for international protection of their
rights to control and receive payment for the use of creative
works such as novels, stories, poems, plays, songs, operas,
musicals, sonatas, drawings, paintings, sculptures, and architectural works. Emulating the Paris meeting, the Bern Convention established an international bureau to direct tasks. In
conjunction with Paris Convention officials, the bureau
formed an organization called the United International Bureau for the Protection of Intellectual Property (BIRPI). A
staff of seven, based in Bern, Switzerland, preceded what became the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
over 60 years later.
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, persistent market expansion and lobbying of government officials resulted
in new U.S. law expanding the duration of knowledge protection and a greater focus on world trade standards. Intellectual
property increasingly served as a key commodity that American inventors, artists, and business owners used to control
uses of their products and to raise investment money. Intellectual property definitions increasingly became key underpinnings for general agreements on trade, drawing interest
from business leaders and policymakers. In the wake of other
new multilateral institutions dedicated to international economic cooperation, notably the Bretton Woods institutions
(now known as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT) surfaced in 1946. Early GATT negotiations resulted in
45,000 tariff concessions affecting $10 billion—or about onefifth—of world trade, and they began a worldwide transition
toward detailed provisional rules governing trade. A special
charter for the International Trade Organization (ITO), a
short-lived agency of the United Nations, even set rules relating to employment, commodity agreements, restrictive business practices, and international investment. GATT became
officially activated in January 1948 and established a forum
that world leaders used to develop international principles of
trade and business, including intellectual property.
In 1960 BIRPI moved from Bern to Geneva, and a decade
later, the organization became the World Intellectual Property Organization. In 1974 WIPO became a specialized
agency of the United Nations and received a mandate to administer intellectual property matters recognized by members. GATT remained the only multilateral instrument governing international trade until the Marrakesh Agreement
established the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1994.
The latter body established a council for trade-related aspects
of intellectual property rights (TRIPS), operating under the
guidance of the WTO’s General Council. This interaction
codified intellectual property rights within industrial nations
in the same fashion the U.S. Constitution merged English law
with state law in America. Today, WTO officials encourage
global intellectual property provisions and agreement among
major trading nations, and government leaders follow the organization’s advice. When the European Union, in the mid-
1990s, adopted the German copyright standard, which called
for a duration based on the author’s life plus 70 years, U.S.
Congress members increased the U.S. duration from 50 to 70
years. In 1996 WIPO officials entered into a cooperative
agreement with WTO administrators. At the beginning of the
twenty-first century, the organization had 179 independent
member states and a staff of over 800, representing 84 countries around the world.
U.S. corporations became huge supporters of a worldwide
agreement regarding intellectual property standards and the
protection of these business assets (the property itself) as
their own business interests expanded into outlying markets.
Federal spending on semiconductor research in northern
California in the later half of the twentieth century led to the
rise of Silicon Valley and high-tech areas outside Boston.
Other cities and metropolitan areas sought to capture hightech growth industries fueled by technological expansion,
and several cities and states promoted research labs and development centers sometimes affiliated with major universities. These growing R&D centers sprouted new technology
designed to convert ideas and products into wealth. Firms relying on medicine, weaponry, and computing systems remained especially popular.
In the 1970s a magazine similar to Scientific American,
Popular Mechanics, provided inspiration to Microsoft
founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates, who discovered the Altair,
a home computer kit, in the pages of the magazine. Allen and
Gates fastidiously programmed software for the machine and
launched a vast empire designed to license ideas through
software (Microsoft). As several other companies eschewed
business models based on selling machines (hardware, in the
case of computers) or services and consulting, licensing software to operate networks, computers, and manufacturing
systems became accepted practice. Buying and selling software and technology as commodities, as opposed to using the
technology to build something more tangible, was popularized, and the term intellectual property emerged as an American definition of knowledge-based assets such as copyrights,
patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. Law schools began offering special programs for intellectual property studies, and
the term consistently turned up in congressional debates and
within proposed congressional bills in the 1980s. The term
was eventually replaced by a shortened usage, IP, a popular
expression incorporated by business executives, investors,
technologists, and attorneys.
American venture capital firms seeding start-up companies with capital often focus more on the intellectual property associated with a business or idea than on the company
itself. The intellectual property is treated as the critical asset
behind the business and as the only tangible, valuable commodity. Intellectual property–related trade has grown into
one of the largest economic sectors within the nation’s economy. In 1998 high-tech industries accounted for 11 percent of
the $12.5 trillion worth of goods produced in the United
States, and they grew much faster than other sectors. Management of this growth mandated intense interest by private
and public authorities in intellectual property. At the dawn of
the twenty-first century, some estimates conclude that copyrighted material alone contributes over $400 billion to the
U.S. economy each year, arguably making it the country’s single most important export.
—R. Jake Sudderth