INTRODUCTION The proper treatment of intellectual property, writ large, is the focal point of a high-stakes dispute that resonates both within and beyond legal circles. Roughly speaking, the protagonists over intellectual property fall into two broad camps. On the one side, there are those, like myself, who think intellectual property forms a coherent subset of a larger body of property law. Starting from this orientation, we constantly urge that the understandings of property law that have developed in connection with the traditional forms of tangible property can be carried over to intangible property even after the rise of modern technologies, such as the radio and the Internet. On the other side of the debate lie those who think that the rules of tangible property often provide little guidance for a sound system of intellectual property rights and should therefore be followed only with caution, if at all. The first side thinks that the law that is now in place can be improved by a sound adherence to first principles. Its detractors regard the system as moribund. The thesis of this Article is that it is too soon to write an obituary for an integrated system of tangible and intellectual property.
