Intellectual Property

John Pros B. Valencia, RL., MLIS

Instructor
At the end of this presentation, students
should be able to:

 Understand the concepts and definitions on

intellectual property.
 Identify strengths and limitations of using
copyrights, patents, and trade secret laws to
protect intellectual property.
 Explain the key intellectual property issues.
 Intellectual Property
 Is a term used to describe works of the mind—such as
art, books, films, formulas, inventions, music, and
processes—that are distinct and owned or created by a
single person or group.
 Copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets form
a complex body of law relating to the ownership of
intellectual property, which represents a large and
valuable asset to most companies. If these assets are
not protected, other companies can copy or steal them,
resulting in significant loss of revenue and competitive
advantage.
Copyrights
 Is the exclusive right to distribute, display,
perform, or reproduce an original work in
copies or to prepare derivative works based
on the work.
 Copyright infringement is a violation of the
rights secured by the owner of a copyright.
Infringement occurs when someone copies a
substantial and material part of another’s
copyrighted work without permission.
 Copyright Term
 A copyright is the exclusive right to
distribute, display, perform, or reproduce
an original work in copies; prepare
derivative works based on the work; and
grant these exclusive rights to others.
 Eligible Works
 Copyright law has proven to be extremely
flexible in covering new technologies, including
software, video games, multimedia works, and
Web pages. However, evaluating the originality
of a work can be difficult and can lead to
litigation.
 Copyrights provide less protection for software
than patents; software that produces the same
result in a slightly different way may not
infringe a copyright if no copying occurred.
 Fair Use Doctrine
 The fair use doctrine establishes four factors for
courts to consider when deciding whether a
particular use of copyrighted property is fair and
can be allowed without penalty:
(1) the purpose and character of the use,
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work,
(3) the portion of the copyrighted work used, and
(4) the effect of the use on the value of the
copyrighted work.
 Software Copyright Protection
The use of copyrights to protect computer
software raises many complicated issues of
interpretation of what constitutes
infringement.
The Prioritizing Resources and Organization
for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act of
2008
 Increased trademark and copyright
enforcement and substantially increased
penalties for infringement.
 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT)
 The original General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (GATT) created the World Trade
Organization (WTO) in Geneva, Switzerland,
to enforce compliance with the agreement.
GATT includes a section covering copyrights
called the Agreement on Trade-Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
(TRIPS).
 The WTO and the WTO TRIPS Agreement
(1994)
The WTO is a global organization that deals
with rules of international trade based on
WTO agreements that are negotiated and
signed by representatives of the world’s
trading nations. The goal of the WTO is to
help producers of goods and services,
exporters, and importers conduct their
business.
Summary of the WTO TRIPS Agreement
Form of intellectual Key terms of agreement
property

Copyright Computer programs are protected as literary works. Authors of

computer programs and producers of sound recordings have the
right to prohibit the commercial rental of their works to the
public.
Patent Patent protection is available for any invention—whether a
product or process—in all fields of technology without
discrimination, subject to the normal tests of novelty,
inventiveness, and industrial applicability. It is also required that
patents be available and patent rights enjoyable without
discrimination as to the place of invention and whether products
are imported or locally produced.
Trade secret Trade secrets and other types of undisclosed information that
have commercial value must be protected against breach of
confidence and other acts that are contrary to honest commercial
practices. However, reasonable steps must have been taken to
keep the information secret.
 The World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty
(1996)
 The World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO) is an agency of the
United Nations dedicated to “the use of
intellectual property as a means to stimulate
innovation and creativity.”
 The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998)
 The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA),
which was signed into law in 1998, implements
two WIPO treaties in the United States.
 It also makes it illegal to circumvent a technical
protection or develop and provide tools that allow
others to access a technologically protected work.
In addition, the DMCA limits the liability of
Internet service providers for copyright
infringement by their subscribers or customers.
Patents
 A patent is a grant of property right issued by
the United States Patent and Trademark Office
to an inventor that permits its owner to
exclude the public from making, using, or
selling a protected invention, and it allows for
legal action against violators.
 A patent prevents copying as well as
independent creation (which is allowable
under copyright law).
 For an invention to be eligible for a patent, it
must fall into one of three statutory classes of
items that can be patented:
a. It must be useful;
b. it must be novel; and
c. it must not be obvious to a person having
ordinary skill in the same field.
 Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (2011)
 It changed the U.S. patent system from a “first to-
invent” to a “first-inventor-to-file” system and
expanded the definition of prior art used to
determine the novelty of an invention and whether it
can be patented. The act made it more difficult to
obtain a patent in the United States.

 Software Patents
 Claims as its invention some feature or process
embodied in instructions executed by a computer.
 Cross-Licensing Agreements
Many large software companies have cross-
licensing agreements in which each party agrees not
to sue the other over patent infringements.
 For example, Apple and HTC battled for several
years over various mobile phone-related patents,
which eventually led to the U.S. International Trade
Committee banning imports of two models of the
HTC mobile phone. The two companies eventually
agreed to a 10-year cross-licensing agreement that
permits each party to license the other’s current and
future patents.44
Trade secrets
 Was defined as business information that
represents something of economic value, has
required effort or cost to develop, has some
degree of uniqueness or novelty, is generally
unknown to the public, and is kept
confidential.
 Trade secret law has three key advantages over the use
of patents and copyrights in protecting companies
from losing control of their intellectual property:

(1) There are no time limitations on the protection of

trade secrets, unlike patents and copyrights;
(2) there is no need to file any application or
otherwise disclose a trade secret to outsiders to gain
protection; and
(3) there is no risk that a trade secret might be found
invalid in court.
 Trade Secret Laws
1. Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA)
 Derives independent economic value, actual
or potential, from not being generally known
to, and not being readily ascertainable by,
persons who can obtain economic value from
its disclosure or use, and
 Is the subject of efforts that are reasonable
under the circumstances to maintain its
secrecy.”
2. The Economic Espionage Act (EEA) (1996)
 In the United States, trade secrets are protected by
the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, which makes
it a federal crime to use a trade secret for one’s own
benefit or another’s benefit. Trade secrets are most
often stolen by insiders, such as disgruntled
employees and ex-employees.
 Industrial espionage involves using illegal means to
obtain information that is not available to the public.
Participants might place a wiretap on the phones of
key company officials, bug a conference room, or
break into a research and development facility to
steal confidential test results.
 Employee and trade secrets
Organizations must educate employees about the
importance of maintaining the secrecy of corporate
information.

Trade secret information should be labeled clearly

as confidential and should only be accessible by a
limited number of people. Most organizations have
strict policies regarding nondisclosure of corporate
information.
Key Intellectual Property Issues
 Plagiarism
 Is the act of stealing someone’s ideas or words and
passing them off as one’s own. Plagiarism detection
systems enable people to check the originality of
documents and manuscripts.
 Reverse Engineering
Is the process of taking something apart in order to
understand it, build a copy of it, or improve it.
Reverse engineering was originally applied to
computer hardware but is now commonly applied to
software.
 Open Source Code
 Refers to any program whose source code is made available
for use or modification, as users or other developers see fit.
The basic premise behind open source code is that when
many programmers can read, redistribute, and modify it, the
software improves. Open source code can be adapted to meet
new needs, and bugs can be rapidly identified and fixed.
 Competitive Intelligence
 Is legally obtained information that is gathered to help a
company gain an advantage over its rivals. Competitive
intelligence is not the same as industrial espionage, which is
the use of illegal means to obtain business information that is
not readily available to the general public. In the United
States, industrial espionage is a serious crime that carries
heavy penalties.
Trademark Infringement
Is a logo, package design, phrase, sound, or word
that enables a consumer to differentiate one
company’s products from another’s. Web site
owners who sell trademarked goods or services
must take care to ensure they are not sued for
trademark infringement.
 Cybersquatting
 Registered domain names for famous trademarks or
company names to which they had no connection,
with the hope that the trademark’s owner would
eventually buy the domain name for a large sum of
money.
Reference
 Reynolds, G. W. (2015). Ethics in Information
Technology. 5th. Ed. Australia : Cengage
Learning.