Author ORCID Identifier

David Fagundes 0000-0003-1795-7143

Aaron Perzanowski 0000-0002-3975-1800

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

Keywords

IP rights, Terminal mechanisms, Expiration, Abandonment, Forfeiture, Invalidation, Public domain, Ownership

Abstract

Real and personal property may last forever, but intellectual property (IP) ends. Despite the doctrinal complexity and practical significance of the mechanisms that terminate IP rights, scholarship has scarcely focused on them, and none has analyzed these doctrines as a unified field. As a result, the discourse about the ways IP ends remains impoverished, with courts, legislatures, and commentators offering imprecise and inconsistent formulations that obscure the rationales for these doctrines. This Article offers the first comprehensive taxonomy of IP’s terminal mechanisms, providing much-needed conceptual and definitional coherence. It then reveals the underappreciated policy leverage these mechanisms can deliver and offers a set of concrete proposals for reforming IP through expanding and adapting its terminal rules. Finally, the Article considers what lessons, if any, traditional property law might learn from how IP ends.

First Page

68

Publication Title

New York University Law Review

Comments

Copyright © 2026 by Dave Fagundes & Aaron Perzanowski.

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