Law Commons^™

Giving Intellectual Property, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Jeffrey A. Maine

Faculty Publications

The interdisciplinarity of intellectual property and taxation poses many challenges to the disparate existing norms in each field of law. This Article identifies and critiques the current tax regime governing the giving of intellectual property as a manifestation of the failure to understand the principles and policies underlying intellectual property and the firm. It proposes an incentives-based system that would encourage firms to extricate part of their repository of residual rights by surrendering their monopolistic ownership of intellectual property for the benefit of charitable organizations and, in turn, the development and growth of society.