Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
lect “intellectual property” creates a bias toward ownership. Some believe the creators of
intellectual property have a natural right to own what they create. However, paradoxes
occur when we try to extend John Locke's theory of property rights to intellectual prop-
erty. As we saw in our hypothetical scenarios involving William Shakespeare and Ben
Jonson, intellectual property has two characteristics that make it significantly different
from ordinary property. First, each creation is unique. That creates a problem when two
people independently create the same work. Second, ideas are copied, not stolen. When
I take your idea, you still have it. These paradoxes illustrate that Locke's natural rights
argument for property does not extend to intellectual property. We conclude there are
no strong arguments for a natural right to intellectual property.
Nevertheless, our society recognizes the value of intellectual property creation. In
order to stimulate creativity in the arts and sciences, governments have decided to grant
limited ownership rights in intellectual property to its creators. In the United States,
there are four different ways in which individuals and organizations can protect their
intellectual property: trade secrets, trademarks/service marks, patents, and copyrights.
A trade secret is a confidential piece of intellectual property that provides a company
with a competitive advantage. The formula for Coca-Cola is a famous trade secret. A
company may keep a trade secret confidential indefinitely.
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. Xerox is a well-known
trademark identifying a brand of photocopy machine. Companies protect their marks
to ensure they are used as adjectives rather than common nouns.
A patent gives an inventor the exclusive right to an invention for a period of 20 years.
A patent is a public document, and after the patent expires, anyone has the right to make
use of its ideas.
A copyright provides authors with certain rights to original works they have written:
reproduction, distribution, public display, performance, and production of derivative
works. Books, movies, sheet music, songs, and computer software are all protected by
copyright. Industries producing products protected by copyright account for 6 percent
of the US economy, with about $900 billion in annual sales. Over time, both the length
of copyright protection and the kinds of intellectual property that can be copyrighted
have increased significantly. Works created today are protected for the author's lifetime
plus 70 years.
The rights given copyright holders are limited. The fair use doctrine allows cer-
tain uses of copyrighted works without asking the copyright holder for permission. To
determine whether a particular use is fair use, courts consider the purpose of the use
(commercial versus noncommercial), the nature of the work being copied (fiction ver-
sus nonfiction), how much of the copyrighted work is being used, and how the use will
affect the market for the copyrighted work. Two court cases legitimized time shifting
(recording a TV program for viewing later) and space shifting (copying a recording to
make it portable).
The introduction of digital technology and the Internet have brought intellectual
property issues to the forefront. Representing audio and video content digitally means
anyone with the right equipment can make perfect copies. Internet technology enables
