</a>Generic frameworks of intellectual property

Einsteins Implicit Theory of Relativity - of Cognitive Property? Unexamined influence of patent office procedures (Part #6)

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Clearly patents focus on a very particular form of intellectual property. Trademarks and copyright offer other instances. Theories, notably those bearing the name of the originator, offer another -- whether or not they are treated as intellectual property.

In the spectrum between such instances and the invariant frameworks recognized in terms of the special theory of relativity, consideration can be given to the frameworks constituted by concepts, categories, ontologies, values, beliefs, epistemologies and "ways of knowing" -- whether in isolation or as part of "systems". To what extent is a discipline to be considered as a frame of reference -- distinct from other such frames of reference -- and what is to be said of the relationship between them?

Most concretely there is also "real estate" and its virtual equivalents in cyberspace, including web "domains". In psycho-social systems there are also notions of "territory" and "turf" with which scholars in academic disciplines are notably far from unfamiliar (cf Dynamically Gated Conceptual Communities: emergent patterns of isolation within knowledge society, 2004).

For all such cognitively bounded, and variously registered, recognized and "patented" domains, there are fundamental issues of how distinctions are made and how boundaries are drawn. These are issues variously explored by:

• George Spencer Brown (Laws of Form, 1969) notably in the form of the "calculus of indications" (Louis H. Kauffman, Virtual Logic: the calculus of indication, Cybernetics and Human Knowing: a journal of second order cybernetics and cyber-semiotics, 5, 1, 1998) Contents: Volume 5 No. 1, 1998) or boundary algebra.
• Hilary Lawson (Closure: a story of everything, Routledge, 2001)
• Ernst Cassirer (Substance and Function, 1910; Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, 1923-29). Cassirer's view was characterized by Swabey as an "epistemological theory of relativity" (cf Ernst Cassirer, Marie Collins Swabey, William Curtis Swabey (Substance and Function and Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Dover Publications, 1953)
• Ernst Mach in his epistemological theory of relativity (cf John Blackmore, Ernst Mach Leaves 'The Church of Physics', The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 40, 1989, 4, pp. 519-540)

A useful review of such perspectives is offered by Jerome Iglowitz (Virtual Reality: consciousness really explained, 1998-2007). Given the various kinds of confusion associated with relativity and relativism, the associated cognitive property merits a clarificatory mapping using techniques such as that, mentioned above, of Gavin Clarkson (Patent Informatics for Patent Thicket Detection: a network analytic approach for measuring the density of patent space, 2005).

Especially interesting is the issue of how people identify with such domains and derive their sense of identity from them, possibly in contrast to more dynamic understandings of identity (Emergence of Cyclical Psycho-social Identity: sustainability as "psyclically" defined, 2007).

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