Question

How have copyright, patent, and trademark laws govern the use of intellectual property online

Answer 1

Copyright applies to work that is recorded in some way; rights exist in items such as literary, artistic, musical and dramatic work as well as films, sound recordings and typographical arrangements. It gives the author specific rights in relation to the work, prohibits unauthorised actions, and allows the author to take legal action against instances of infringement or plagiarism.

Copyright is an automatic international right, and excepting specific considerations for US citizens, a single registration with the UK Copyright Service ensures you have verifiable evidence of copyright ownership to help prove and protect your rights at a worldwide level. Immediate protection is available via the online copyright registration facility, while postal applications are typically processed in just a few days.

A trademark can be a name, word, slogan, design, symbol or other unique device that identifies a product or organisation.

Trademarks are registered at a national or territory level with an appointed government body and may take anywhere between 6 and 18 months to be processed.

Registering in countries such as the US, the UK, Japan, etc will protect your mark in that country only, but within the European Union, there now exists a Community Trade Mark (CTM) which covers the mark in all EU countries.

There is also the Madrid System that provides a facility to submit trademarks applications to many countries at the same time.

Registered trademarks may be identified by the abbreviation ‘TM’, or the ‘®’ symbol. (it is illegal to use the ® symbol or state that the trademark is registered until the trademark has in fact been registered).

In the US there is also a differentiation between marks used for products or services, with a classification called service-marks used for services, though they in fact receive the same legal protection as trademarks.

In most countries, the national patent office will also administer trademarks.

Patents apply to industrial processes and inventions, and protect against the unauthorised implementation of the invention.

Patents are grants made by national governments that give the creator of an invention an exclusive right to use, sell or manufacture the invention. Like trademarks, patents are registered at a national or territory level with an appointed government body. Patents typically take 2 to 3 years to be granted.

1. Don't File Patents

The most uncommon way to protect intellectual property is not to file patents. Filing patents provides the recipe of how a product or service can be created. Once a recipe is published, one can create a similar product with workarounds to not violate the intellectual property rights. The second method is to standardize the idea with a standards association, so that others are blocked from creating such an idea.

2. Run Lean And Fast

Innovation in the tech sector will always be prone to plagiarism. To some extent, that's what drives innovation's evolutionary jumps in such quick succession. Having relentless innovation cycles keeps your competitors constantly catching up. That does require your company to run like an Olympic runner

3. Avoid Joint Ownership

Make sure to avoid joint ownership of intellectual property at all costs. Joint ownership creates problems later on that could make it difficult to protect, hurting all parties involved

4.  Safeguard With Strong Access Control

Store manuscripts, creations and all ideas in a safe place that’s protected by an identity and access-management solution. With 81% of breaches being due to compromised credentials, it’s essential to store intellectual property on a system that uses adaptive authentication with risk analysis, or at least two-factor authentication. Passwords alone are obsolet