#18 - Concept Reference, Must Be True, Subject Perspective

[StephLewis13]

Hello,

I would like some further clarification on this question. I answered it correctly (E) because I eliminated (A-D), but I wanted to find the contextual evidence for the legal theorists' claim. Here is my thinking process:

In Paragraph Two, the passage states, "Applying the notion of retained rights… copyrighting [patent protection] a work secures official recognition… Among the rights typically retained by the original producer [inventor]… would be the right to copy the object…"

From this, I gathered that it is standard for the inventor to retain certain rights upon transferring ownership of intellectual property (even without copyrighting the work), and that copyrighting the work presupposes this standard practice. Therefore, because copyrighting a work is an official means, it is common legal practice to allow inventors to retain certain rights even without a patent.

^Please rephrase this in a more coherent way for me to better understand the underlying idea behind this question. I feel confused mainly due to the diction and the construction of the answer choice. Thanks!

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Steph,

There's actually some better evidence for answer choice E in the last paragraph of the passage. In fact, I went straight to that paragraph because this question stem asked about what the "legal theorists supporting the tangible-object theory of intellectual property" are likely to believe, and the first part of paragraph 3 directly talks about what is true "[a]ccording to proponents of the tangible-object theory." Not surprisingly, that sentence (which talks about what the proponents would say) is the key support for answer choice E.

The sentence says that the theory's "chief advantage is that it justifies intellectual property rights without recourse to the widely accepted but problematic supposition that one can own abstract, intangible things such as ideas." "Without recourse" means that the theory doesn't need to suppose/assume that someone could own abstract things like ideas. This fits with answer choice E's language that the law "need not invoke the notion of inventors’ ownership of abstract ideas." In other words, if the law doesn't need to "invoke" that notion, the law can function "without recourse" to that notion.

Let me know if that clears up the confusion on this one? Keep up the good work!

[StephLewis13]

Hi Jeremy,

Yes. Thank you so much. That was helpful and is a much better justification for answer E than the lines I was citing.

[German.Steel]

Between this question and #16 (with the ambiguous “theorists” in P2), this passage has questions that are shockingly poorly-written I mean, fine, process of elimination and all that. But what the hell does “patent protection” have to do with anything? Out of scope concepts are supposed to be a huge red flag for inference questions, and while a lawyer would probably figure that we can lump in patent protection with the copyright and other stuff the passage was talking about, this is hardly an obvious thing for a non-lawyer. Gross.

By the way, and just for context — I’m not a salty student, I’m a 99.5th percentile scorer (and now tutor) trying to learn how to teach this damned passage to students, and repeatedly banging my head against the wall trying to explain this crap…all I can say is, thank goodness the more recent exams (70+) don’t have trash like this, and are much more unambiguous, by and large.

I’ll step off my soapbox now, thanks for listening

[Robert Carroll]

German.Steel,

The first sentence explicitly says "copyright and similar intellectual-property rights. That's easy to miss since it's at the beginning of the passage, and often tiny details at the beginning or end of the passage are necessary to validate an answer.

Robert Carroll

[German.Steel]

I retract my previous comment, what a dumb thing to say. Of course it's commonsense that patents fall within the same broad category as copyrights. Mea culpa.