Professional Practices in IT

Intellectual Property Rights

Books
 Michael Quin – Chapter 4
 Kizza – Chapter 6
What is intellectual property?
 Intellectual property is any unique product of the human
intellect that has commercial value.

 Examples of intellectual property are books, songs, movies,

paintings, inventions, chemical formulas, and computer
programs.

 It is important to distinguish between intellectual property

and its physical manifestation in some medium. If a poet
composes a new poem, for example, the poem itself is the
intellectual property, not the piece of paper on which the
poem is printed.
Property Rights
 The English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704)
developed an influential theory of property rights.

 Locke makes the following case for a natural right to

property:

 First, people have a right to property in their own person.

 Second, people have a right to their own labor. The work
that people perform should be to their own benefit.
 Third, people have a right to those things that they have
removed from nature through their own labor
Property Rights
 For example:
 Suppose you are living in a village, in the middle of
woods that are held in common. One day you walk into
the woods, chop down a tree, saw it into logs, and split the
logs into firewood. Before you cut down the tree,
everyone had a common right to it. By the time you have
finished splitting the logs, you have mixed your labor with
the wood, and at that point, it has become your property.
Whether you burn the wood in your stove, sell it to
someone else, pile it up for the winter, or give it away, the
choice of what to do with the wood is yours.
Intellectual Property Rights
 Your mobile or computer stolen, you no longer have it, it seems
obvious.
 The legal definition of theft involves taking away a piece of someone’s
property with the intention permanently to deprive them of it.
 Tangible property, which can be touched. Protected by laws relating to
theft and damage.

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 If you invent a solution / formula and leave that formula on
your desk, someone can come along, read the formula,
remember it, and go away and make his/her fortune out of
that idea.
 In this case, you still have the formula with you.

 This shows that the formula / information is not property in

the same way that a mobile/computer is.

 Intellectual property is an intangible property, which,

against other forms of property, cannot be defined or
identified by its own physical parameters.
Intellectual property (IP)
 Intellectual property (IP) broadly describes intangible things such as
 ideas,
 inventions,
 technologies,
 artworks,
 music and literature, and
 others that one can claim ownership to.

 Ownership of IP to any of these things may result in economic gain

as rewards to personal initial investments before they acquire value.

 Intellectual Property is the creation of the human intellectual process

and is therefore the product of the human intellect or mind.
Intellectual Property Rights
 IP is governed by a different set of laws called Intellectual Property
Laws.

 Intellectual property rights include

 trade secrets (confidential information),
 patents,
 trade marks,
 designs
 most importantly the copyrights protecting computer programs.

 IP rights protect information stored by electronic means and all of

the paperwork which accompanies a program, such as the user
manual, plus any multimedia packages and most items on the web.
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Computer Technology
Gaining the skills to provide computer technology products,
services, and software requires a considerable investment
both in time and money.

 So the individuals who do this work should reap financial

rewards for their efforts.
Intellectual Property Rights
Suppose your FYP as your new product
 Copyright law automatically protects the source code and all
documentation of the package from copying without your permission.
 You may patent your product by registration so that no one else
would be able to produce a similar product
 The law relating to confidential information could be used to
prevent any employee / concerned person from passing on details of
the design / architecture.
 The name and the logo could be registered as a trade mark to
prevent other companies / universities / groups from using it on their
products.

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Intellectual Property Rights -
 Trade Marks:
 A trademark is a word, symbol, picture, sound, or color
used by a business to identify goods. A service mark is a
mark identifying a service.

 By granting a trademark or service mark, a government

gives a company the right to use it and the right to prevent
other companies from using it. Through the use of a
trademark, a company can establish a “brand name.” Society
benefits from branding because branding allows consumers
to have more confidence in the quality of the products they
purchase.
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Intellectual Property Rights -
 Trade Marks:
 Trade marks identify the product of a particular manufacturer
or supplier. E.g. Microsoft, McDonalds, Oracle, Coca Cola etc.
 Trademark protects any word, name, logo or device used to
identify, distinguish or indicate the source of goods or services.
 Includes trade dress (the total image and overall appearance of
a product) and product configuration (the shape if non
functional).
 The purpose is to safeguard the integrity of products and to
prevent product confusion and unfair competition.

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Trade Mark - Examples
Service Mark - Examples
Intellectual Property Rights
 Patents:
 Temporary right, granted by the state, enabling inventor to prevent
other people from exploiting his invention without permission.
 Patents are primarily intended to encourage and protect new
inventions, by giving inventors a monopoly on exploiting their
inventions for a certain period.

 Patent is a public document that provides a detailed

description of the invention. The owner of the patent can
prevent others from making, using, or selling the
invention for the lifetime of the patent. After the patent
expires, anyone has the right to make use of its ideas.
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Patents:
 Invention to be novel, useful and non-obvious.

 Compulsory Licensing –the inventor must apply for the

patent to be granted.

 Patent Infringement
 Apple sued Samsung for patent infringement regarding several
patents associated with Apple’s smartphone and tablet devices.
Apple was ultimately awarded $1.1 billion in damages
Patent Infringement – Case study
Types of Intellectual Property
Rights:
 Copyright:
 As the name suggests, it is concerned with the right to copy
something i.e. the work.

 It may be a written document, a picture or photograph, a piece

of music, a recording, or many other things including a
computer program.

 Only certain types of work are protected by copyright law

including original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic.
 Literary work includes a table or compilation, a computer program,
preparatory design material for a computer program etc.

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Copyright:
 Copyright grants exclusive rights to the creator of original scientific, artistic
or literary works.

 ‘Original’ is key in defining a work that qualifies for copyright protection.

 Internationally, copyright is a right, enforceable by law and

accorded to an inventor or creator of an expression.

 A copyright notice consists of a copyright symbol denoted by ©, the

word “copyright,” the year the copyright was granted, and the name
of the copyright owner, for example, Copyright © 1995 John Mukasa.
Copyright:
 It provides authors with certain rights to original works
that they have written. The owner of a copyright has five
principal rights:

1. The right to reproduce the copyrighted work

2. The right to distribute copies of the work to the public
3. The right to display copies of the work in public
4. The right to perform the work in public
5. The right to produce new works derived from the
copyrighted work
Copyright: Case study
Copyright:
 • Types of work that can be copyrighted:
 – Architecture
 – Art
 – Audiovisual works
 – Choreography
 – Drama
 – Graphics
 – Literature
 – Motion pictures
 – Music
 – Pantomimes
 – Pictures
 – Sculptures
 – Sound recordings
 – Other intellectual works
 • As described in Title 17 of U.S. Code
Copyright:
 To get Copyright:
 – Work must fall within one of the preceding categories
 – Must be original

 Evaluating originality can cause problems

 For authors and/or creators of works who need this kind of protection, the process
begins with an application to the copyright office. Each country’s copyright office
has different requirements. The US Copyright Office requires an applicant to include
with the application a copy of the work for which a copyright is sought and to file
for copyright within 3 months of the first distribution of the work. Upon receipt of
the application by the copyright office, it is reviewed to make sure it meets the three
criteria of originality, fixation, and expression for the issuing of a copyright.
 Upon approval, the recipient must place a notice of copyright ownership in all parts
and copies of the work.
Copyright:
 Work in public domain:
 When the copyright on a work expires, that work goes into the public domain.
 Other works in public domain include those owned by governments; non-
copyrightable items such as ideas, facts, and others; works intentionally put in
the public domain by the owner of the copyright; and works that lost
copyrights for various reasons before the copyrights expired.

 Works in public domain are not protected by the copyright law and can be
used by any member of the public without prior permission from the owner of
the work.

 Examples of such works in the United States include works published before
1978 whose copyright has not been renewed and, therefore, have no valid
copyright notice.
Fair Use
 The right given to a copyright owner to reproduce a work
is a limited right.

 Under some circumstances, called fair use, it is legal to

reproduce a copyrighted work without the permission of
the copyright holder.

 Examples of fair use include citing short excerpts from

copyrighted works for the purpose of teaching,
scholarship, research, criticism, commentary, and news
reporting.
Fair Use
 Four factors that need to be considered:
 1. What is the purpose and character of the use?
 An educational use is more likely to be permissible than a commercial
use.

 2. What is the nature of the work being copied?

 Use of nonfiction is more likely to be permissible than use of fiction.
Published works are preferred over unpublished works.

 3. How much of the copyrighted work is being used?

 Brief excerpts are more likely to be permissible than entire chapters.

 4. How will this use affect the market for the copyrighted work?
 Uses that reduce sales of the original work are less likely to be considered
fair use.
Fair use – Example: Evaluate this scenario
based on the four factors of fair use