The strange and complicated issue of the ownership of ideas

The notion of ownership is very different when applied to different classes of thing. For example, owning an inanimate object, land/ property, an animal or an idea. [Complementary dad joke: Q: “Why do communists only drink herbal tea?” A: “Because proper tea is theft.”] The difference between ownership of a physical thing, like a bicycle, a cake or a house, and intellectual property like an idea, a design or a song, is pretty significant. The latter - intangible, informational assets - can usually easily be copied, and even have their attribution stolen, all with almost zero cost. Legislation is all that stands in the IP thief’s way. I suggest that there is even a reasonable, if radical, argument to be made that the economic world could function without any ownership rights over intellectual property. But the more subtle issue is what it means to own an idea. From personal experience I know there is definitely a yin and yang here. If you try to hold on too tightly to an idea, and police the world’s usage of your intellectual baby, that is a huge burden to take on, and often limits take-up of it, although you do get to control meaning and quality a bit more. If, on the other hand, you let your idea fly free, let others build on it, interpret it how they will, use it without your consent, knowledge or without even acknowledging you. If you do that, the idea gets much more play, but you will feel less ownership and be much less able to control the meaning of your idea. When you work in companies where ideas are their main product, it is also interesting whether individual ownership is allowed, encouraged, revealed to customers/ the wider world. On the one hand it can be very motivating for an individual employee to feel/ be seen as the ‘mother/father of idea xxx’, and create a bond between creator and customer of an idea, but on the other hand collective ownership can encourage collaboration, and makes the business more scalable and less reliant on specific individuals. The way I am wired, I love to be acknowledged for the IP I have created, but also love for others to interpret and build on IP I generated, and I like building on others’ ideas whilst giving attribution to them. I assert full intellectual property rights over this blogpost, including the genAI created image. Please contact me to license it.