Semantics of Intangible Property Rights in Legal Discourse of Islam and Iran

The word “Intangible Property Rights” has not been clearly identified and categorized among Muslim jurists and lawyers and its exemplifications range is different in various definitions. This difference in concept and domain of Intangible Property Rights exemplifications is not caused by the translated and imported expression from western legal literature since such confusion can be seen according to selected names and expression for this concept. Nowadays, given the importance of terminology in jurisprudential and legal issues, in particular paying attention to intangible property rights, as the right whose sentences are the subject of contemporary jurisprudential and legal researches is felt as the first stage to present a clear and united definition for property right. Therefore, present study tried to offer a new definition for intangible property right by studying and criticism of several existing definitions and thereby the study recognizes intangible property right as a separated concept from intellectual rights, moral rights and the rights relating to personality which has relationship with these conceptions. In this regard, intangible property right is a right derived from 5 essential expediencies of the human and has been defined to support spiritual expediencies of the personality. Consequently, the exemplifications range is derived from those 5 essential expediencies. Then, in order to study meaning of individual spiritual personality and value position of the property right among other rights, we identified exemplification of the property rights driven both by the human’s natural and ethereal needs by comparing and studying the viewpoints about property right fundamentals in Islamic and western laws.