Intellectual Property Policy Online: A Young Person’s Guide

This is an edited version era presentation to the "Intellectual Property Online" panel at the Harvard Conference on the Internet and Society, May 28-31, 1996. The panel was a reminder o'f both the importance o f intellectual property and the dangers of. legal insularity. Of approximately 400 panel attendees, 90% were not lawyers. Accordingly, the remarks that follow are an attempt to lay out the basics of intellectual property policy in a straightforward and non-technical manner. In other words, this is what non-lawyers should k~ow (and what a number o f government lawyers seem to have forgotten) about intellectual property policy on the Internet. The legal analysis which underlies this discussion is set out in the Appendix.