Intellectual propriety

While the central questions concerning intellectual property involve strict rights and duties relative to legal notions such as patent, copyright and plagiarism, the article considers some norms recognised in the world of learning regarding the attribution and use of the fruits of other people’s intellectual labour. Considered as one of the academic virtues, intellectual propriety seems, like honesty but perhaps unlike curiosity, to admit of no excess unless as a sort of pedantry. The defects that are principally opposed to it are presumptuousness and pretentiousness.