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property is not intended to be defined narrowly here”.9 That
explicit legislative intent to define broadly the term “tangible
personal property” suggests that the term may encompass all
personal property that is not intangible property in the narrow,
traditional sense; i.e., rights and obligations created by law.
Cf. Goldman, Comment, “From Gaius to Gates: Can Civilian
Concepts Survive the Age of Technology?”, 42 Loy. L. Rev. 147,
166 (1996) (defining incorporeals as legal rights and
obligations, and corporeals as that which is not incorporeal).
Intangible intellectual property rights and the tangible or
physical manifestations or embodiments of those rights are
distinct property interests. See, e.g., 17 U.S.C. sec. 202
(1994) (ownership of copyright distinct from ownership of any
material object in which work is embodied). A purchaser of a
particular tangible manifestation or embodiment of intellectual
property acquires only property rights in that manifestation or
embodiment and does not acquire any rights to the underlying
intellectual property. In this case, petitioner acquired
copyrighted articles and did not acquire any of the underlying,
exclusive copyright rights. Cf. sec. 1.861-18, Proposed Income
9 Some have suggested that the expansive definition of the
term “tangible personal property” applies only in relation to
fixtures or other items regarded as real property for certain
purposes under local law because the examples presented in S.
Rept. 1881, 87th Cong., 2d Sess. (1962), 1962-3 C.B. 703, 722,
address such property. The examples illustrate the adjective
“personal” in the term “tangible personal property” and do not
foreclose a broad interpretation of the adjective “tangible”.
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