law.georgetown.edu
First Ideas
We live in a world obsessed with firsts, in terms of accomplishments, creations, races, and milestones. At the same time, societal understandings of “first” can obscure others who in fact came beforehand. This Article is about understanding the hold that the idea of “first” has over intellectual property laws and how this hold can make the allocation of intellectual property rights less effective. It locates the roots of “first” as a basis to allocate rights in traditional property law. It then sets out four values that a rule of first possession can be seen to promote when it is transplanted to intellectual property: fairness, order, societal benefits, and rhetorical power.
