A Unifying Theory of Copyrights and Patents

Over the recent past, technological advances (among other effects) have opened a grey area of intellectual property that cannot be properly covered by either of the two existing legal regimes, patent and copyright. Some innovations do not fall easily into either regime, while others seem to fall into both. In this paper it is argued that it may be possible to define a single body of law that can be molded to fit all types of intellectual product. This idea is not new-it was suggested in the legal literature some 12 years ago but it seems to have been ignored. In the current paper, the argument goes beyond the simple suggestion that the two existing regimes could be unified, and suggests that the degree of protection that is granted could usefully be made a choice variable for creators, at a price. This is nothing more than the imposition of a Pigouvian tax system to cater for the externality that legal protection implies for society.