Copyright Law within the Architecture of Intellectual Property Rights

Copyright law is frequently spoken of in the same breath as "intellectual property," yet the precise relationship between the two is often assumed rather than examined. This paper argues that copyright is best understood not as a synonym for intellectual property but as one constituent limb of a larger legal family that also includes patents, trademarks, industrial designs and trade secrets. Drawing on the international treaty framework built around the Berne Convention and the TRIPS Agreement, the economic literature associated with Landes and Posner, and the Indian judicial experience beginning with Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak, the paper traces how copyright acquired its distinctive doctrinal character while remaining tethered to the broader justificatory logic of intellectual property protection. It concludes that the interlink between the two is neither incidental nor merely terminological: copyright's rules on originality, the idea-expression dichotomy and the duration of protection are all instances of a general IPR bargain being adapted to the particular economics of expressive works.