"Nathan Newman" <nathan at newman.org> wrote:
<< From: "Michael Perelman" <michael at ecst.csuchico.edu>
>When did the term, intellectual property, first appear?
Doing a quick scan through Supreme Court decisions, a pretty isolated example is a mention in the 1873 case, Mitchell v. Tilghman, 86 U.S. 287, where the opinion quotes a letter using the phrase.
Other that that isolated mention, the phrase does not appear in a Supreme Court decision until 1949 in . C.I.R. v. Wodehouse, 337 U.S. 369.
There is a lower federal court decision from 1845 in MassDavoll v. Brown, 1 Woodb. & M. 53, 3 West.L.J. 151,, that mentions the phrase. Here is what the court says in the course of a patent dispute: "These principles, however, are not inconsistent with another one, equally well settled, which is, that a liberal construction is to be given to a patent, and inventors sustained, if practicable, without a departure from sound principles. Only thus can ingenuity and perseverance be encouraged to exert themselves in this way usefully to the community; and only in this way can we protect intellectual property, the labors of the mind, productions and interests as much a man's own, and as much the fruit of his honest industry, as the wheat he cultivates, or the flocks he rears."
Hope that helps
>>
If Michael means "appear" in a wider sense than court papers, I remember hearing IBM use the term in the late 70s, perhaps early 80s.
The speakers were IBM lawyers, so I guess there was an established legal use of "intellectual property" beforehand.
To my knowledge, the use of computers gave the term wider currency, as a shorthand for controlling software.
There used to be _Computer/Law Journal_ published in LA that should be searched for the term.
-- John K. Taber