How is intellectual property different from tangible property?
Answers
Intellectual property is intangible... ideas. It's something someone conceive of in their mind. The idea of making an invention, the idea of how a book should be written, the idea of how a painting should be painted. Yes, these ideas can be, and somethimes have to be, reduced to a physical embodiment (book written on computer disk or paper; painting on canvase, invention reduced to practice by preparation of a prototype or by writing a description and necessary drawings) in order to qualify for protection under the law, but the concepts were intellectual.
In contrast, physical property... such as real estate... doesn't require conception; itdeas. Real estate just is. Sometimes you have to measure it (survey it) to have rights to it; or stake it out and do certain acts to own it (like homesteading), or discover it (like an uncharted, uninhabited island outside the existing national territory claims of a country (not likely here on Earth anymore), but you don't have to "concieve of it.
Sometimes physical property is the result of Intellectual Property... the physical piece of artwork produced by an artist; but rarely does the mere possession of a piece of physical property carry all the intellectual property rights that are associated with the physical item. Buying a book doesn't give you the right to make and sell copies of the book - until the copyright expires' and then you don't even have to own a copy of the book to make and sell copies. Buing an automobile doesn't give you the right to make use of the inventions that are incoprorated into the automobile -until the patent rights expire; and once the patents expire you don't even have to have ever owned the automobile to practice the inventions that were the subject of the expired patent.
You can negotiate the purchase of intellectual property rights along with a physical property, such as buying an original oil painting, and buying the rights to copy it and publish/sell reproductions of the painting...but you are really buying two things... the physical property and the intellectual property.
Answer:
Intellectual property law differs from other property law in that intellectual property law protects rights in intangible property, whereas other property law protects tangible, or physical, property. Thus, intellectual property law deals with abstract concepts, rather than with concrete physical objects.