Intellectual what?

"Under the law, intellectual property is treated as if it were property."

Under Brazilian Law, it is a reasonable proposition - "as if it were property". That's to say - it is _not_ property at all, but for a legal fiction it is to be treated as such, to the limits and purposes of that fiction...but no further. Licenses are dealt in the IP code in an extremely short fashion; therefore, the Civil Code rules on lease apply. That's just application of the principle jus abhorret vacuum. Exclusive rights on non-self-equal goods are similar enough to exclusive rights on self-equal goods to allow for analogical rules to be used. The right to keep the asset on which crucially necessary improvements were made could therefore be applied to licensed patents, albeit the silence of the IP code. The common economic and equitable base seems to grant that.


But you can grant licenses to multiple persons; oh, yes, you can lease the same apartment to many persons, but some annoyance would result to at least some of the shier tenants. Analogy is a useful tool, but is just a makeshift appliance.