Exploring Intellectual Property Through the Lens of Religious Thought

A growing cadre of scholars finds sacred works to be a rich source of inspiration on issues of temporal as well as eternal importance and choose to focus at least a subset of their scholarship on exploring ways that religious thought can inform approaches to challenging IP questions. This chapter explores the work, inspirations, and methodologies of several such scholars writing at the intersection of IP and religious thought. It illuminates some of the contributions this interdisciplinary approach offers for legal and policy development in the field of IP with a focus on Christian (Catholic and Protestant), Jewish, and Muslim perspectives. It also highlights views on the similarities and differences between scholarly approaches to this subject matter and other IP-related writings.