Just stop it, ok? Just stop saying "Intellectual Property". Please, for the love of Dog. Say what you really mean: copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret, but not "IP". Can the world please just stop using this confusing and dangerous term?
People toss around the term "IP" as if they can fence off some place in Idea Land, sit there on a rocking chair with a shotgun, and defend their thoughtspace against anyone who would interfere with their $DEITY given right to profit from it.
Part of the blame must rest with journalists for propagating this loaded term. Case in point: the Times has an article entitled "New Legal Threat to GMail", in which a UK firm is challenging Google's GMail service. But reading the article, you would be hard-pressed to figure out exactly what Google is supposed to have done wrong. Every time the CEO of the company in question speaks, he bandies about "intellectual property" as if Eric Schmidt himself broke into to his house and nicked his telly. The truth is that a few years ago IIIR conceived of a service to publish currency market reports to subscribers, and they called it "G-Mail". Now they are suing Google for alleged trademark violation over the name itself. A Slashdot poster dug up the registrations of trademarks, and it would appear that Google got in first. Time will tell.
So this suit is over the idea of taking the word "mail" and placing the letter "G" in front of it. That is their "intellectual property" (read trademark) claim. To be fair, a company needs to "defend" its trademark from misuse to maintain its eligibility for protection. However, in this instance they appear to be operating in two different markets anyway.
Richard Stallman has written an excellent deconstruction of this term in his article Did you say "Intellectual Property?" It's a seductive mirage. It should be required reading, especially for lawyers and journalists.
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