The Legal Nature of Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Environment

Abstract

The world has witnessed significant technological developments, with the digital environment and its circulating digital works constituting the core of this transformation. These advancements have posed new challenges for legal doctrine and the judiciary, calling for their proper regulation. They have also given rise to numerous contemporary legal issues, including the problem of determining the legal nature of intellectual property rights. Such rights are neither real rights, as the latter pertain to tangible objects while intellectual rights concern intangible ones, nor personal rights, since the latter represent a relationship between two persons, whereas intellectual rights are powers exercised over an intangible object. Moreover, they are not inherently attached to one’s personality.