Why care about intellectual property rights?
Why care about intellectual property rights? Isn't it something of
interest to the birds... or maybe the attorneys? If you said 'Yes',
think again!!
Consider the internet provider in Lithuania or the one person startup
in Canada who download the contents of your site onto their servers,
change the headers, and are deriving commercial benefits from that
content. Consider the professor in California or the faculty staff
member in the UK who believe that they have all the justifications for
copying your publication -- without attribution or authorization -- since
they are using it only for non-commercial teaching purposes. How about
the research lab director at a large northeastern United States
university who firmly believes that he is right in making
physical copies of your online content on their server for their
testing purposes?
All the incidents cited above occurred in reality over the last one
year and in each of these incidents the copyright law has implications
for the perpetrators, who commit intellectual property infringement
with or without intention of deriving any commercial benefit.
If you are involved in production or consumption activity in the
information chain, you need to, perhaps, care about the intellectual
property rights!!
The Taj Mahal and the Virtual Corporations
In an earlier age, any specific product was handcrafted and the
creation of the product was based upon the innate knowledge or skills
of human beings. However, since that era, people have tried to
safeguard their investment in creations that are somehow unique or
provide some unique value. An extreme case is that of Shah Jahan, the
mogul emperor who built Taj Mahal. Folklore goes that the emperor
instructed his soldiers to chop off the hands of the craftsmen so that
they could never create another monument like Taj Mahal!!
In the era of knowledge age or information age, the fundamental
unit of most products and services is information -- in one or another
form. Ever thought about the virtual enterprises and virtual products?
Most such notions of the knowledge society and the virtual
products rest upon the cornerstone of 'information': in digital or
non-digital form. In several cases such information is of proprietary
nature, i.e., it has unique value deriving from usage, research,
development,
design, etc. Hence, the investment in that information product,
knowledge product or the virtual product must be protected to
encourage other similar initiatives. The initial investment is of
critical importance given that replicates of such products could be
created with relative ease and without incurring a large expense. How
difficult or expensive is it to download a copy of the software
program code once it is created? With increasing worldwide access to
electronic distribution, the damage caused by piracy to content producers
may completely destroy the value built in their intellectual property.
[For more on this, see the Sep 26, 1997 Economist article
Copyrights
and Copywrongs.]
The same context is valid in the case of companies who have earned
consumer recognition for their brand names and trade marks. A recognized
brand name or trade mark represents the goodwill that has been built into
the product or service. Consumers tend to associate the recognized brand
name or trade mark with certain characteristics that are specific to that
name or mark. Therefore, companies often spend millions of dollars
annually for safeguarding the investment in the related intellectual
property rights.
That is the crux of the intellectual property rights: to give credit
where, and when, it is due. There are international enforcement
bodies, such as the Software Publishers
Association and Business Software
Alliance, that have been active in exposing and penalizing
the perpetrators of intellectual property theft. We also have associations
such as the Open Software Foundation
whose motto is to allow unrestricted access
to software whenever possible. Who can deny the efforts underlying the
initiatives of the creators of the freeware and shareware that are now
benefiting the masses around the world? However, most such public domain
software also includes copyright notices and trade marks. The rights of
the producers and consumers of such information products are defined by
these intellectual property notices.
It cannot be denied that with the
emergence of the knowledge society and virtual products,
the issue of safeguarding the investment in the information based products
would assume increasing importance. We, as consumers or
producers in the information chain, cannot afford to be ignorant
about the intellectual property rights!! Why?... Because
What You Don't Know
Can Hurt You!
