A Gift of fire

4th Edition
Sara Baase
Chapter 4: Intellectual Property

outline:
4.1 Principles, Laws, and Cases
What is Intellectual Property(IP)?
Challenges of New Technology
Fair Use Doctrine
Ethical arguments about copying
Plagiarism and Copyright

4.2 Responses to Copyright Infringement

International Piracy
Digital Right Management (DRM) Protection for copyrighted materials
DRM Vs. Fair Use

4.3 Search Engines and Online Libraries

Tools for authorized sharing: (Creative Commons)

4.4 Free Software

Should all software be free?
Copyleft

4.5 Patents for Inventions in Software

To patent or not?

4.1 Principles, Laws, and Cases

What is Intellectual Property(IP)?
Intellectual Property refers to creations of the mind which can be
Invention (Patents), trademarks, literature, symbols, names, etc.

IP is protected by copyright law, patent law, and trademarks law

which enable people to earn recognition or financial benefit from
what they invent or create.

Types of intellectual property:

Trademarks
Patent
Industrial designs
Trade Secret
Geographic indications
Copyright

Trade Marks
What is TradeMark?
Is a distinctive sign, name, logo, symbol, image, or
a combination of these elements used by an individual, business

organization, to identify the products or services to consumers

with which the trademark appears originate from a unique
source, and to distinguish its products or services from those

of other entities.

Trade Marks
TradeMark Protection?
Registering your trade mark gives you the exclusive right to use
your mark for the goods or services.
The trademark symbol, designated by
(the letters TM written in superscript style), is a symbol used in the
US States to provide notice that the preceding mark is a trademark.
This symbol is typically used for trademarks not yet registered
with the Trademark Office;
If you have a registered trade mark you can put the symbol
next to it to warn others against using it

Patent
What is a Patent ?
Is an exclusive right granted by a government

to an inventor

to protect its invention for a specified time period

It gives the owner the right to prevent others from making, using,
importing or selling the invention without permission

Laws of nature and mathematical formulas cannot be patented.

Businesses routinely pay license fees to use patented inventions in their products.

Patent
Advantages of Patent ?
A patent gives the inventor the right to stop others
from manufacturing, copying, selling without

permission of the patent holder.

The patent holder has exclusive commercial rights to use the
invention.
Patents are partially responsible for advancements in medical
science, biotechnology, drug chemistry, computers, smart phones,
etc.

Trade Secret
What is a trade secret?
Is formula, a process, a design, a instrument, a pattern, or a compilation of
information which is not generally known or reasonably ascertainable, by
which a business can obtain an economic advantage over competitors.

Companies keep it secret to give them an advantage

over their competitors.
The formula for Coca-Cola is the most famous trade secret.

Geographical Indications
What is Geographical Indication?
*A name or a sign used on certain products corresponding to a specific
geographical origin and often possesses qualities or a reputation that are due
to that place of origin.

Industrial designs
What is Industrial Design (ID) ?
is the professional service of creating and developing concepts and specifications
that optimize the function, value and appearance of products and systems for the
mutual benefit of both user and manufacturer

Copyright: Principles, Laws, cases

What is a Copyright?
Is the right that gives the author of an original work exclusive right for a
certain time period in relation to that work, including its publication,
distribution and adaptation, after that time the work the public domain

May hold the copyright or may transfer it to a publisher

Copyright: Principles, Laws, cases

Copyright Law:
To make copies
To produce derivative works, such as translations into other languages or

movies based on books

To distribute copies
To perform the work in public (e.g. music, plays)
To display the work in public (e.g. artwork, movies, computer games, video on a

Web site)

Book: 182

Challenges of New Technology

New technologies raised challenges to intellectual property protection:
Storage Devices : store of all types of information (text, sound, graphics, video) in standard
digitized formats; the ease of copying digitized material and the fact that each copy is a
perfect copy

Compression formats that make music and movie files small enough to download,
copy, and store

Challenges of New Technology

New technologies raised challenges to intellectual property protection:

Scanners allow us to change the media of a copyrighted work, converting printed text,
photos, and artwork to electronic form.

Search engines make finding material easier.

Challenges of New Technology

New technologies raised challenges to intellectual property protection:

Broadband connections make transferring files easier and enable streaming video.

Book: 183

Challenges of New Technology

New technologies raised challenges to intellectual property protection:

Miniaturization of cameras and other equipment enable audience members to record

and transmit events.

Software tools allow us to modify graphics, video and audio files to make new works using
the works of the other

Challenges of New Technology

What does it mean to solve the problems of technologys

impact on intellectual property rights?
We should recognize that the problem looks different from
different perspectives.

Book: 182-185

Fair Use Doctrine

Fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material
without acquiring permission from the rights holders.
Four factors to consider in determining whether a particular use is a
fair use:
Purpose and nature of use commercial or nonprofit purposes
Nature of the copyrighted work
Amount and significance of portion used

Effect of use on potential market or value of the copyright work

(will it reduce sales of original work?)

Book: 187

Fair Use Doctrine

No single factor alone determines

Not all factors given equal weight, varies by circumstance

Ethical arguments about copying

Copying or distributing a song or computer program does not decrease the

use and enjoyment any other person gets from
his or her copy.
Copying can decrease the amount of money that the copyright owner earns.

Book: 187-188

Ethical arguments about copying

Copying enables users to try out products, benefiting the copyright owner by
encouraging sales.
Businesses and organizations should make their own decisions about
marketing products, not consumers who want free samples.
Fair use guidelines are useful ethical guidelines.

There are many arguments for and against unauthorized copying.

Book: 188-189

Discussion Questions
How is intellectual property like physical property?
it means that the owner (the person who created the work) is the only one allowed to use

the work, or any substantial portion of it, without permission

How is intellectual property different than physical property?

Physical property is a type of "tangible" property that can be touched and moved, or

physically sold.
Intellectual property is a type of "intangible" property that exists as a concept, and may

be represented in physical form, but is not touched

Do you agree with the idea that someone can "own" intellectual property?

Book: 180-190

Plagiarism and Copyright

Plagiarism is the use of someone elses work (usually written work),

representing it as ones own

Word processors and the Web have made it easier by making so

much information available and making copying as easy as cut and
paste.

Book:195

Discussion Question
What do you think the impact would be on creative industries, such
as music, movies and fiction novels, if copyright laws did not protect
intellectual property?

Book: 192-194

4.2 Responses to Copyright Infringement

Ideas from the software industries

Expiration dates- An expiration date within a software; the software destroyed

itself after that date.

Dongles -The purchaser has to plug in a device (Dongle) into a port on the
computer so that the software will run.

Book: 196-198

4.2 Responses to Copyright Infringement

Ideas from the software industries

Copy Protection - Diskettes containing consumer software had copy protection to

ensure that you could not copy it.

Serial Number- Some software requires activation or registration with a special serial
number

Book: 196-198

International Piracy
Some countries do not recognize or protect intellectual
property
Countries that have high piracy rates often do not have a
significant software industry
Many countries that have a high amount of piracy are
exporting the pirated copies to countries with strict copyright
laws
Economic sanctions often penalize legitimate businesses, not
those they seek to target

Book: 197

Digital Right Management (DRM) Protection

for copyrighted materials
DRM is Collection of techniques that control uses of intellectual property in digital
formats.
Digital objects are very easy and cheap to copy:

Music, Movies, Text, images, Executables files

DRM techniques Includes hardware and software schemes using Encryption, Digital
Signatures, Digital Watermarking ,
The producer of a file( text, music, movies, ebooks) has flexibility to specify what a
user may do with it(i.e. prevent saving, printing, making more than a specified
number of copies)
Apple, Microsoft and Sony all use different schemes of DRM

Book: 200-201

DRM Vs. Fair Use

DRM prevents fair uses as well as infringing uses. It can prevent
extraction of small excerpts for review or for a fair use in a new work,
for example.
Programmers and researchers regularly find ways to crack or thwart
(or circumvent)

4.3 Search Engines and Online Libraries

Search Engines:
Caching and displaying small excerpts is fair use
Creating and displaying thumbnail images is fair use
Google negotiated licensing agreements with news services to copy and
display headlines, excerpts, and photos.
Trademarked search terms

Book: 208-210

4.3 Search Engines and Online Libraries

Books Online:
Project Gutenberg offers over 46,000 free e-books in the public domain
Microsoft scanned millions of public domain books in University of California's library
Google has scanned millions of books that are in the public domain and that are not;
they display only excerpts from those still copyrighted
Some court rulings favor search engines and information access; some favor content
producers

Book: 210-211

Tools for authorized sharing:

(Creative Commons)

The Creative Commons license: allows you to keep your copyright but allows
others to copy and distribute your work only on the conditions you specify

Book:209

Free Software
What is free software?
Free software is an idea advocated and supported by a large, group of
computer programmers who allow people to copy, use, and modify their software
Free means freedom of use, not necessarily lack of cost

Open source - software distributed or made public in source code (readable

and modifiable)

Book: 211-213

Free software Advantages

With freely distributed software, more people can use and benefit from a
program.

With source code available, any of thousands of programmers can find

and fix bugs quickly.
A software bug is an error in a computer program or system that causes it to produce

an incorrect or unexpected result.

Users and programmers can adapt and improve programs.

Book: 211-213

Free Software
Should all software be free?

Would there be sufficient incentives to produce the huge quantity of consumer

software available now?
Would the current funding methods for free software be sufficient to support all
software development?
Should software be covered under copyright law?
Concepts such as copyleft and the GNU Public License provide alternatives to
proprietary software within today's current legal framework

Book: 213-214

Copyleft
Copyleft is a general method for making a creative work as freely
available to be modified, and requiring all modified and extended
versions of the creative work to be free as well.

4.5 Patents for Inventions in Software

Patent decisions, confusion, and consequences
Patents protect inventions by giving the inventor a monopoly for a specified time period.

Laws of nature and mathematical formulas cannot be patented.

Obvious inventions or methods cannot be patented.

Book: 215-216

4.5 Patents for Inventions in Software

A few cases:
Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, and e-commerce and Web-viewing
Apple, Android, and tap-touch screens
IBM , Amazon, and electronic catalogues

Book: 217

4.5 Patents for Inventions in Software

Patent trolls:

Some companies accumulate thousands of technology patents but do not make

any products.
They license the patents to others and collect fees.
Google, Apple, and Microsoft paid billions of dollars to buy thousands of
wireless and smartphone patents.

Book: 217

To patent or not?
In favor of software patents:
Reward inventors for their creative work

Encourage inventors to disclose their inventions so others can build upon them

Encourage innovation

Book: 218-219

To patent or not?
Against software patents:
Patents can stifle innovation, rather than encourage it.
Cost of lawyers to research patents and risk of being sued discourage small

companies from attempting to develop and market new innovations.

It is difficult to determine what is truly original and distinguish a patentable

innovation from one that is not.

Book: 219

Read the following Questions and Submit the answers

by the end of

Q1:What are the four factors to consider in deciding whether a use of copyrighted
material is a fair use?

Q2:Describe two things the entertainment industry has done to protect its copyrights.

Q3:Your uncle owns a sandwich shop. He asks you to write an inventory program for
him. You are glad to help him and do not charge for the program. The program works
pretty well, and you discover later that your uncle has given copies to several friends
who also operate small food shops. Do you believe your uncle should have asked your
permission to give away your program? Do you believe the other merchants should pay
you for the copies?

 Q4:You are a teacher. You would like your students to use a software

package, but the schools budget does not include enough money to
buy copies for all the students. Your school is in a poor neighborhood,
and you know most of the parents cannot afford to buy the software for
their children.
(a) List some ways you could try to obtain the software without
making unauthorized copies.

Q5: Read a license agreement for a software product. It could be a game, operating
system, video editor, tax preparation program, and so on.
(a) What does the license agreement say about the number of copies you can make?
(b) Does it specify penalties for making unauthorized copies?
(c) Was the agreement easy to read before purchase (e.g., on the outside of the
package or available on a website)?
(d) Do you consider the license agreement to be clearly stated? Reasonable?

 Q6: List some benefits of free software?

Q7:Describe two things the entertainment industry has done to protect its
copyrights.

Q8:Which of the following activities do you think should be a fair use? Give reasons
based on fair use
(a) Making a copy of a friends spreadsheet software to try out for two weeks, then

either deleting it or buying your own copy.

(b) Making a copy of a computer game, and playing it for two weeks, then deleting it.

Q9:Read a license agreement for a software product. It could be a game, operating

system, and so on.
(a) What does the license agreement say about the number of copies you can
make?
(b) Does it specify penalties for making unauthorized copies?
(c) Was the agreement easy to read before purchase (e.g., on the outside of the
package or available on a website)?
(d) Do you consider the license agreement to be clearly stated? Reasonable?