5e

Ethics in Information Technology

Chapter 6
Intellectual Property
George W. Reynolds
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Learning Objectives
 What does the term intellectual property
encompass, and why are organizations so
concerned about protecting intellectual property?
 What are the strengths and limitations of using
copyrights, patents, and trade secret laws to
protect intellectual property?
 What is plagiarism, and what can be done to
combat it?

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Learning Objectives
 What is reverse engineering, and what issues are
associated with applying it to create a lookalike of
a competitor’s software program?
 What is open source code, and what is the
fundamental premise behind its use?
 What is the essential difference between
competitive intelligence and industrial espionage,
and how is competitive intelligence gathered?
 What is cybersquatting, and what strategy should
be used to protect an organization from it?
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Intellectual Property
 Describes works of the mind that are distinct and
owned or created by a single person or group
 Protected through
 Copyright
 Patent
 Trade secret laws
 Owner controls and receive compensations for the
use of their intellectual property

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Copyright
 Exclusive right to distribute, display, perform,
reproduce an original work in copies or prepare
derivative works based on the work
 Copyright infringement: Violation of the rights
secured by the owner of a copyright
 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act
 Establishes time limits for copy right protected work

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Copyright
 Eligibility criteria
 Work should be original and must fall within one of the
categories described in Title 17 of the U.S. Code
 Fair use doctrine
 Allows portions of copyrighted materials to be used
without permission
 Depends on purpose, character, nature, relation, and
effect of the copyrighted work
 Software copyright protection
 Proving infringement requires showing resemblance that
could be explained only by copying
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Measures for Protection of Intellectual
Property
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)

• Multilateral agreement governing international trade

WTO and the WTO TRIPS Agreement (1994)

• Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual

Property Rights (TRIPS)
• Establishes minimum levels of protection that each government must
provide to the intellectual property of all WTO members

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Measures for Protection of Intellectual
Property
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
Copyright Treaty (1996)
• Encourages use of intellectual property as a means to
stimulate innovation and creativity

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)

• Implements the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the

WIPO Performances

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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
• Does not permit discrimination on basis of place
of invention
Trade secret • Must be protected against breach of confidence
and other acts that are contrary to honest
commercial practices

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Patents
 Grant of a property right issued by the United
States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to an
inventor
 Prevent independent creation and copying
 Require filing application with USPTO
 Prior art: Existing body of knowledge available to a
person of ordinary skill in the art
 Software patents
 Protects feature, function, or process embodied in
instructions executed on a computer
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Patents
 Patent infringement: Unauthorized use of
another’s patent
 Laws for granting patents
 Must be as per Title 35 of the U.S. Code
 Following cannot be patented
 Abstract ideas
 Laws of nature
 Natural phenomenon

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Figure 6.2 - Patents Applied for and
Granted

Source Line: U.S. Patent Statistics Calendar Years 1963–2011, www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/us_stat.pdf

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Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (2011)
 Changed the patent system from a first-to-invent
to first-inventor-to-file
 Expanded the definition of prior art used to
determine the novelty of an invention and whether
it can be patented

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Cross-Licensing Agreements
 Each party agrees not to sue the other over patent
infringements
 Small businesses must pay an additional cost from
which many larger companies are exempt
 Usually settles and licenses its patents to the large
company

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Trade Secrets
 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
 Is kept confidential

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Advantages of Trade Secret Laws
 No time limitations on the protection of trade
secrets
 No need to file an application, make disclosures to
any person or agency, or disclose a trade secret to
outsiders to gain protection
 Trade secrets cannot be ruled invalid by the courts

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Protecting Trade Secret
 Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA)
 Established uniformity across the states in area of trade
secret law
 Economic Espionage Act (EEA) of 1996
 Imposes penalties for the theft of trade secrets
 Nondisclosure clauses
 Prohibits employees from reveling company secrets
 Noncompete agreement
 Prohibits an employee from working for any competitors
for a period
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Plagiarism and Actions to Combat Student
Plagiarism
 Plagiarism: Act of stealing someone’s ideas or
words and passing them off as one’s own
 Actions
 Help students understand what constitutes plagiarism
and why they need to cite sources
 Show students how to document Web pages
 Schedule major writing assignments in portions due over
the course of the term
 Tell students that instructors are aware of Internet paper
mills and plagiarism detection services
 Incorporate detection software and services
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Table 6.3 - Partial List of Plagiarism
Detection Services and Software

Source Line: Course Technology/Cengage Learning

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Reverse Engineering
 Process of taking something apart in order to
understand it, build a copy of it, or improve it
 Applicable for both hardware and software
 Violates copyright and trade secret laws
 Software license agreements forbid reverse
engineering

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Open Source Code
 Program whose source code is made available for
use or modification, as users or other developers
see fit
 Produces better software than the traditional
closed model
 Reasons for developing open source code
 Respect
 Reputation
 Recovering maintenance cost
 Hassle of license and marketing
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Table 6.4 - Commonly Used Open
Source Software

Source Line: Course Technology/Cengage Learning

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Competitive Intelligence
 Legally obtained information that is gathered to
help a company gain an advantage over its rivals
 Integrated into a company’s strategic plans and
decision making
 Not same as industrial espionage
 Industrial espionage: Use of illegal means to obtain
business information not available to the general public
 Sources of data
 Rapportive, Crunchbase, CORI, ThomasNet.com,
WhoGotFunded.com
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Trademark Infringement
 Trademark
 Logo, package design, phrase, sound, or word that
enables a consumer to differentiate one company’s
products from another’s
 Can be renewed forever, so long as a mark is in use
 Lanham Act of 1946 - Defines the use of a
trademark as process for obtaining a trademark
from the Patent and Trademark Office
 Outlines penalties associated with trademark
infringement

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Trademark Infringement
 Nominative fair use - Defense employed by the
defendant in trademark infringement case,
requires proving following
 Plaintiff’s product or service cannot be readily
identifiable without using the plaintiff’s mark
 It uses only as much of the plaintiff’s mark as necessary
to identify the defendant’s product or service
 Defendant does nothing with the plaintiff’s mark that
suggests endorsement or sponsorship by the plaintiff

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Cybersquatting
 Cybersquatters: Register domain names for
famous trademarks or company names to which
they had no connection
 Hope that the trademark’s owner would eventually buy
the domain name for a large sum of money
 Tactics to circumvent cybersquatting - Register all
possible domain names
 .com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .net, .org, arpa, .aero, .biz,
.coop, .info, .museum, .name, .pro, .asia, .cat, .mobi, .tel,
.travel, and .xxx

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Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN)
 Nonprofit corporation responsible for managing
the internet’s domain name system
 Current trademark holders are given time to assert their
rights in the new top-level domains before registrations
are opened to the general public
 Has a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution
Policy
 Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act
allows trademark owners to challenge foreign
cybersquatters

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Summary
 Intellectual property is protected by laws for:
 Copyrights
 Patents
 Trademarks
 Trade secrets
 Plagiarism is stealing and passing off the ideas and
words of another as one’s own
 Reverse engineering
 Process of breaking something down in order to
understand, build a copy of, or improve it
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Summary
 Open source code
 Made available for use or modification as users or other
developers see fit
 Competitive intelligence
 Uses legal means and public information
 Trademark infringement
 Use of other’s trademark in a Web site can lead to issues
 Cybersquatting
 Registration of a domain name by an unaffiliated party

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