Preface: Symposium on Intellectual Property Law Theory

For primary contributors to this symposium we have sought out people whose thoughts on intellectual property are not well known to readers of the standard law reviews. We are very gratified by the results. Of our three philosopher contributors, none has published much explicitly discussing intellectual property before, though the work of each of them is highly relevant to the topic; our economist, who publishes most often in philosophic, economic and communications journals, here brings his various perspectives to bear; our practitioner contributor proves that the most esoteric of academic topics - postmodern literary theory - has relevance to everyday copyright problems; and our artist (ah, how proprietary that adjective is!) brings to the intellectual property debate a flavor of what is really at issue - and what issues must be faced - when law meets art