Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Intellectual Property Law’S Plagiarism Fallacy, Gregory N. Mandel, Anne A. Fast, Kristina R. Olson

BYU Law Review

Intellectual property law is caught in a widespread debate over whether it should serve incentive or natural rights objectives, and what the best means for achieving those ends are. This article reports a series of experiments revealing that these debates are actually orthogonal to how most users and many creators understand intellectual property law. The most common perception of intellectual property among the American public is that intellectual property law is designed to prevent plagiarism.

The plagiarism fallacy in intellectual property law is not an innocuous misperception. This fallacy likely helps explain pervasive illegal infringing activity on the Internet, common …