Download Intellectual Property Rights

7. INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY RIGHTS
• Intellectual products in ICT society:
Books, music compositions, software, movies,
designs
• Qualities:
- reproducible/ can be altered
- can be distributed
- not lost when it is given
• Can intellectual product/ property be owned?
• According to Locke’s labor theory
Think of someone who is;
- planting the seed
- nourishing/ watering
- protecting the crop from bad weather
- cultivate
Who has the right to own?
• Intellectual property is protected through
copyright, trade secret and patent.
Copyright:
Person or company  Spends time, effort,
labor, investment
Has economic and social right.
When copied  Capacity of the owner (a
person or a company) to sell the product
decreases.
• Trade Secret:
Used some measures to protect; like:
- nondisclosure clauses to contracts for
employees refrain to revail what they learned
at work
- license agreements
• Patent:
Legal monopoly
For a new device/ tool/ process which has
novelty
social utility
Patent right is given for encouragement and
promotion to invention and innovation.
Mathematical algorithms
Laws of nature
Mental processes
Scientific principles
can not be patented.
Expression of ideas can be but not the ideas
behind.
Court cases
• After a court case in 1981 in USA  First
patent to software (sw) was given. Increased
year by year. Nowadays given to more than
20000 sw. annually.
• After the court case in 1984 operating
systems started to be protected.
Bibliography:
Computer Ethics, Deborah G. Johnson, Pearson Education Inc.,
2009 (4th edtn.) p. 111-135
Management Information Systems, Kenneth C. Laudon-Jane P.
Laudon, Prentice-Hall Inc., 1996 p. 150-152