AtomicBaboon!?!

I am a member of the Free Software Foundation. I receive interesting e-mails from time to time from them and I got this one a few days ago.

If you are at a university which has a law school, please go to the university archives, and check the old course catalogs to see when classes in the law school began using the propaganda term "intellectual property" (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html) in the names of courses. Please send the date, school, course title and description to rms@gnu.org.

Apparently RMS is doing some research. Could turn into something interesting. A couple days later I got this message from RMS forwarded to FSF members.

>From Richard Stallman:

The reason for the question about old law school course catalogs is that we're looking for historical information that shows when use of the propaganda term "intellectual property" became widespread. We are pretty sure this occurred in the 70s and 80s, but we want to find objective evidence about it.

Since we know that the term was widely used in the late 90s, there is no point sending references to the term from the 2000s. They won't show when the usage _started_. Likewise, the rare uses from long ago are not relevant to this question.

Law school course catalogues from the 70s and 80s can show when they started using that term. By checking them, you can provide evidence that directly relates to the question.

The way to look at the old catalogues from the 70s and 80s is to phone or visit the university library and ask where they are kept and how you can look at them.

You may be able to think of other ways to measure when use of that propaganda term became widespread. If so, please try them -- that information may be useful.