Introduction to a New Theory in Intellectual Property Law : Legal Protection without a Property Right

The main concern of this preliminary research is to establish the place of the intellectual property rights within the classical classification of rights used by theory of law, in rights in rem and rights in personam, or as they were called by Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, multital rights and paucital rights. The analysis is based on contemporaneous legal systems, both national (Anglo-American and continental) and international and involves arguments relating to absolute and relative rights, to natural and positive law. If at the beginning it seems another complex and unanswered question regarding the intellectual property rights legal regime comparing to the classical property rules involving Lockean, Hegelian, utilitarian and monopolistic arguments, at the end my conclusion is that the intellectual property rights, more precisely the economic ones represents rights in personam, relative rights, paucital rights corresponding to a propter rem obligation of the intellectual creation material or electronic support, which cannot reproduce it or in some case even use it without intellectual property right infringement. This propter rem obligation is limited in time and so is the paucital intellectual property right, considering that an intellectual creation by its nature, cannot be appropriated by a person, being conceived, even before the creation, for the use of the general public, in order to enrich universal patrimony and the general knowledge, and not for a personal exclusively use