Legal protection of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR): copyright, patents, trademarks

 The principle of copyright has a long history and is respected across most of the globe.  WhatIsCopyright.org is an excellent, easily digested source of basic information on copyright.

 The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) website has some very useful resources relating to copyright, patents and other aspects of IPR protection.  Their paper on IPR and SMEs covers the main issues from a small business perspective.

Patents, Copyrights & Trademarks for Dummies by Henri Charmasson is a gentle introduction to the field which includes pragmatic advice on completing the forms to apply for a patent. ~US$16 from Amazon.

Patent, Copyright & Trademark: An Intellectual Property Desk Reference (8^th Edition) by Richard Stim is a plain English guide to the [American] laws.  Despite being a legal reference, it gets good review comments on its readability.  ~US$28 from Amazon.

A good source of information on US patent law includes FAQs.

Licensing one’s patents can provide an extremely valuable income stream, offsetting the legal and administrative costs incurred in defending patents.  Amazon and IBM locked horns in a patent dispute, charging each other with patent infringement and counterclaiming that various patents are invalid or unenforceable.  Microsoft was ordered to pay $1.5 billion (!) to Alcatel-Lucent in a patent dispute over the MP3 audio technology used in Windows.  If anyone still doubts the true economic value of intellectual property, Amazon’s out-of-court settlement of a $40m claim by a patent holder should be a salutary lesson.  The patents relate to Internet shopping processes used by Amazon ... and Gap ... and presumably many other eCommerce-enabled companies.  Amazon has deeper pockets than most but 40 mill is 40 mill.  The writing is on the wall for those who flagrantly ignore patent infringements.

The UK government is considering a report by former newspaper editor Andrew Gowers regarding possible changes to copyright law including tougher enforcement measures. “[Gowers] said piracy and counterfeiting was probably the biggest challenge the intellectual property (IP) system faced.  The report estimates 20% of the entertainment industry’s turnover was lost to illegal copying and says tougher enforcement is a vital part of reform.”

Some BBC DJs have been illegally copying and using digital copies of music despite a music licensing scheme in the UK and of course the Copyright Act.

Free Patents Online claims to have more data and features than the US Patents and Trademarks Office.  Many US and European patents are searchable and available.

Patent junky IBM has legally pledged to release 500 of its US technology patents to the open source movement.  According to the press release, this “represents a major shift in the way IBM manages and deploys its intellectual property (IP) portfolio.” although a cynic might note that IBM registered over 3,000 new US patents in 2004 alone.

An antivirus software vendor has found a novel use for copyright protection: it prosecuted a researcher in France who disclosed bugs in their antivirus program under copyright law because he published excerpts of the reverse-engineered code in the exploit without their permission.

The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) website carries news of video seizures in the UK and other anti-piracy/enforcement items.

Bitlaw has a useful set of information resources on the legal protection of intellectual property in an IT context, and here is the FindLaw collection of IP papers.

Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute has a guide to US copyright legislation plus the Berne Convention which underpins international agreement on copyright.  There is more information on US copyright on Stanford’s Copyright and Fair Use website.

International patent law is more variable than copyright.  Cornell University’s guide to patent law covers US legislation.

There are numerous government departments governing intellectual property around the world e.g. US UK India Japan Australia (for a comprehensive list of international patent office websites, click here).

Software licensing and piracy

A scene reminiscent of the satellite TV crypto wars has emerged with Advanced Access Copy System (AACS), a copy protection scheme designed to control the playing and copying of protected DVD/video content.  A hacker claimed to have broken AACS, the protection technology used by both the competing standards HD -DVD and Blu-ray.  Blu-ray apparently has the capability to encode alternative protection mechanisms on the DVDs themselves which mitigates the risk a little but if the hacker’s claims are true, HD-DVD is already in deep trouble.

The Chinese have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to ‘receive lists of products to be protected from copyright infringement and information about instances of detected copyright violation’ [whatever that means].  It has been estimated that around 86% of software in China was pirated in 2005.

A DVD pirate in England was fined £55,000 and given a six month jail sentence.  The fine was  judged to be his profit from selling pirated copies of films such as Kill Bill and Lord of The Rings, using ~500 false identities on eBay.

I trust that the owner of this home CD/DVD duplication facility is familiar with copyright law.

All organizations that use commercial software should be aware of the activities of the Business Software Alliance.  Back in 2003, they netted over half a million dollars from one company alone.  They offer free software audit tools to gather details of installed software.

Piracy is a widespread problem that affects honest, legitimate businesses not just the unethical.  Theft of intellectual property damages the suppliers’ businesses and increases the costs for those who pay for their licenses.

Some of the most well-known industry groups representing software vendors in the fight against piracy are the BSA (Business Software Alliance), ESA (Entertainment Software Association), and FAST (Federation Against Software Theft).  These groups offer advice and assistance to organizations or individuals who wish to comply with software licenses such as free software audit utilities.

Microsoft’s website includes some basic generic information on piracy.

Warez sites have been run on the web by software pirates for years but this article argues that broadband has increased the potential for end-user/home systems, not just commercial organizations and ISP systems, to be compromised as warez servers.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) networking

Useful end-user presentation by Virginia Tech on copyright issues including those relating to peer-to-peer networking.

The Kazaa website carries a paper extolling the virtues of peer-to-peer networking for artists and their agents as well as consumers.  Kazaa operates a different business model and digital rights management scheme than the infamous Napster which was closed down for copyright infringement in 2000 and has also since relaunched with a new way of working.

Intellectual property and the Internet

Commerce One’s bankruptcy proceedings attracted the interest of major-league software companies due to the fire-sale of its web services patents.  A mystery buyer scooped the lot for $15.5m, leaving the prospect that they may be able to recover significant royalties from companies using the patented inventions.

Domain names are intellectual property and as such are vulnerable to information security issues.  FindLaw advises on how to choose and use domain names without infringing trademarks belonging to others.  Google temporarily lost control of google.de when someone, somehow, managed to get the DNS entries transferred from Google’s ISP to another.  Google also lost a court battle in Germany over the Gmail trademark.

A US-CERT cybersecurity tip on avoiding copyright infringement offers sensible advice for computer users who would like to use materials obtained from the web, amongst other things.

Plagiarism of digital materials is a serious problem on the web since there is such a vast quantity of source material available and it is so easy to cut-and-paste text, images etc.  Plagiarism.org is a fascinating project using computer technology (“document source analysis” or digital fingerprinting and cross-matching) to identify plagiarized written materials submitted as original coursework by cheating students.  The somewhat  blurry distinction between fair use and plagiarism may let culprits some off the hook but the technology takes some account of simple changes such as word substitutions, insertion and deletion of text etc. to give an indication of originality.  Copyscape is being developed using Google to identify website content plagiarists . 

Technical and legal copyright controls such as encryption can of course be used to protect copyright materials published on the web.  We use the encryption features of Adobe Acrobat, for example, to apply digital signatures and other controls on the sample NoticeBored materials on this website.  Watermarks can be used to put the originator’s mark on audiovisual and textual information, much like ranchers might use a branding iron to scorch logos on their livestock.  A article from Indian software house Cranes Software describes the technology behind watermarking.

The Copyright Website has information and practical advice on using copyright to protect website materials, and notes some well-known legal cases relating to theft and protection of electronic intellectual property.

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