According to the concept of Anglo-American property law, the word "property" has double meanings: first, it refers to people's rights to things, and second, it refers to all kinds of tangible and intangible things as the objects of such rights. Among them, the meaning of the former is dominant. The Encyclopedia Britannica points out: "Property can be defined as the exclusive right to dominate economic property; It is the name of concepts such as rights and obligations, privileges and restrictions. " The Oxford Law Guide points out: "The word property is suitable to express ownership, for example, in the case that legal rules stipulate the transfer of property rights." At the same time, it is pointed out: "It is best to understand property rights as a bundle of several different rights, some or even many of which can be transferred without losing ownership.
Intellectual property originated from the "privilege" of feudal society. In medieval Europe, there was a long-standing privilege granted by the monarch to industrialists and businessmen to monopolize certain commodities. But this is different from today's "patent" after all, and it is very similar to the salt and iron monopoly in the Han Dynasty, except that the monopoly "profit" in the Han Dynasty was a state monopoly, while in medieval Europe it was a monopoly of industrialists and businessmen. The etymology of the word "patent" in China also takes the same meaning. In mandarin, it means that one person monopolizes all interests.
D. A.Bogsch, Director-General of the World Intellectual Property Organization, once suggested that only one word in Chinese is equivalent to Patent (English word "patent"), which has both the meaning of "exclusive" and "open" to replace "patent", so as not to cause people to misunderstand the patent system.