Ethics in

Information
Technology

CHAPTER 6
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
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Objectives:

As you read this chapter, consider the following questions:

 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 are the key intellectual property issues ?

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What Is Intellectual Property?

 Term used to describe works of the mind

 Distinct and “owned” or created by a person or group
 Protected through:
 Copyright law
 protects authored works
 Patent law
 protects inventions
 Trade secret law
 helps safeguard information critical to an organization’s success

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Ethics in Information Technology, Fourth Edition

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Copyrights

 Established in the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8

 Grants creators of original works the exclusive right to:

 Distribute
 Display
 Perform
 Reproduce work
 Prepare derivative works based upon the work

 Author may grant exclusive right to others

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Copyrights (cont’d.)

 Copyright infringement
 violation of the rights secured by the owner of a copyright
 occurs when someone copies substantial and material part of another’s
copyrighted work
 Without permission

 Software copyright protection

 Use of copyrights to protect computer software raises many complicated issues of
interpretation

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Copyrights (cont’d.)

 Copyright term
 Copyright law guarantees developers the rights to their works for a certain amount of
time

 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (1998)

 For works created after 1/1/78, life of the author plus 70 years

 Created but not published or registered before 1/1/78, life of the author plus 70 years;
expiration before 12/31/2004

 Created before 1978 still in original or renewable term of copyright, 95 years from the
date the copyright was originally secured

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Copyrights (cont’d.)

 Eligible works

 Types of work that can be copyrighted include:

 Architecture Music
 Art Pantomimes
 Audiovisual works Pictures
 Choreography Sculptures
 Drama Sound recordings
 Graphics other intellectual works
 Literature
 Motion pictures

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Copyrights (cont’d.)

 To be eligible for a copyright:

 Must fall within one of the preceding categories
 Must be original
 Evaluating originality can lead to litigation

 Fair use doctrine

 Allows portions of copyrighted materials to be used without permission under certain
circumstances
 Maintains balance between protecting an author’s rights and enabling public access to
copyrighted works

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Copyrights (cont’d.)

 Fair use doctrine factors include:

 Purpose and character of the use

 Nature of the copyrighted work
 Portion of the copyrighted work used
 Effect of the use upon the value of the copyrighted work

 Key concept: an idea cannot be copyrighted, but the expression of an

idea can be

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Copyrights (cont’d.)

 The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual

Property (PRO-IP) Act of 2008
 Increased enforcement and substantially increased penalties for infringement

 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)

 Multilateral agreement governing international trade
 Created World Trade Organization (WTO) to enforce compliance with the
agreement
 Despite GATT, copyright protection varies greatly from country to country

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Copyrights (cont’d.)

 The WTO and the WTO TRIPS Agreement (1994)

 Many nations recognize that intellectual property has become

increasingly important in world trade

 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property

Rights (TRIPS)
 Established minimum levels of protection that each government must provide
to the intellectual property of members

 Covers copyright, patents, and trade secrets

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Copyrights (cont’d.)

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Copyrights (cont’d.)

 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)

Copyright treaty (1996)

 Advocates for the interests of intellectual property owners

 “the use of intellectual property as a means to stimulate innovation and
creativity”
 WIPO Copyright Treaty provides additional copyright protections for
electronic media

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Copyrights (cont’d.)

 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)

 Violations of these provisions carry civil and criminal penalties

 Governs distribution of tools and software that can be used to

circumvent technological measures used to protect copyrighted works

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Patents

 Grant of property right to inventors

 Permits an owner to exclude the public from making, using, or selling the
protected invention

 Allows legal action against violators

 Prevents independent creation as well as copying

 Extends only to the United States and its territories and possessions

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Patents (cont’d.)

 Patent infringement
 Making unauthorized use of another’s patent
 No specified limit to the monetary penalty

 Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (2011)

- patent system changed from a “first-to-invent” to a “first- inventor-to-
file” system effective March 16, 2013
- also expanded the definition of prior art used to determine the novelty of an
invention and whether it can be patented

 Software patent
 Protects feature, function, or process embodied in instructions executed on a
computer

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Patents (cont’d.)

 Applicant must file with the Patent Trademark Office

 PTO searches prior art

 Prior art
 Existing body of knowledge available to a person of ordinary skill in the art

 PTO will not issue a patent for an invention whose professed

improvements are already present in the prior art.

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Patents (cont’d.)

 An invention must
 be useful
 be novel
 not be obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the same field

 Items cannot be patented if they are:

 Abstract ideas
 Laws of nature
Cross-Licensing Agreements
 Natural phenomena Many large software companies have cross-
licensing agreements in which each party
agrees not to sue the other over patent
infringements.
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Trade Secrets

 Trade secret
 Business information
 Represents something of economic value
 Requires an effort or cost to develop
 Some degree of uniqueness or novelty
 Generally unknown to the public
 Kept confidential

 Information is only considered a trade secret if the company takes steps

to protect it.

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Trade Secrets (cont’d.)

 Law doesn’t prevent someone from using the same idea if it is developed
independently

 Trade secret law has a few key advantages over patents and copyrights
 No time limitations
 No need to file an application
 Patents can be ruled invalid by courts
 No filing or application fees

 Trade secret law varies greatly from country to country

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Trade Secret Laws

 Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA)

 Established uniformity across the states in area of trade secret law
 as “information, including a formula, pattern, compilation, program, device,
method, technique, or process
 Computer hardware and software can qualify for trade secret protection

 The Economic Espionage Act (EEA) of 1996

 Penalties of up to $10 million and 15 years in prison for the theft of trade secrets

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Employees and Trade Secrets

 Employees are the greatest threat to trade secrets

 Trade secret information should be labeled clearly as confidential
 Should only be accessible by a limited number of people

 Nondisclosure clauses in employee’s contract

 Enforcement can be difficult
 Confidentiality issues are reviewed at the exit interview

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Employees and Trade Secrets
(cont’d.)

 Noncompete agreements

 Protect intellectual property from being used by competitors when key

employees leave
 Require employees not to work for competitors for a period of time
 Wide range of treatment on noncompete agreements among the various states

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Key Intellectual Property Issues

 Issues that apply to intellectual property and information

technology

 Plagiarism
 Reverse engineering
 Open source code
 Competitive intelligence
 Trademark infringement
 Cybersquatting

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Plagiarism

 Stealing someone’s ideas or words and passing them off as one’s own
 Many students:
 Do not understand what constitutes plagiarism
 Believe that all electronic content is in the public domain

 Plagiarism is also common outside academia

 Plagiarism detection systems

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Plagiarism (cont’d.)

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Plagiarism (cont’d.)

 Steps to combat student plagiarism

 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 into an antiplagiarism program

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Reverse Engineering

 Process of taking something apart in order to:

 Understand it
 Build a copy of it
 Improve it

 Applied to computer:
 Hardware
 Software

 Convert a program code to a higher-level design

 Convert an application that ran on one vendor’s database to run on another’s

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Open Source Code

 Program source code made available for use or modification

 Basic premise
 Many programmers can help software improve
 Can be adapted to meet new needs
 Bugs rapidly identified and fixed
 High reliability, produces better software

 common use of open source software is to move data from one

application to another and to extract, transform, and load business data
into large databases.

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Competitive Intelligence

 Gathering of legally obtainable information

 To help a company gain an advantage over rivals

 An effective CIP requires the continual gathering, analysis, and

evaluation of data with controlled dissemination of useful information to
decision makers
 Often integrated into a company’s strategic plans and decision making
 Not the same as industrial espionage, which uses illegal means to obtain
business information not available to the general public

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 By coupling this competitive intelligence data with analytical tools and

industry expertise, an experienced analyst can make deductions that lead
to significant information.

 “The Web is the best competitive intelligence tool in the world.”

 A wide array of software applications, databases, and social media tools

are available for companies—and individuals—looking for competitive
intelligence data

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 Competitive intelligence analysts must avoid unethical or
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illegal actions, such as lying, misrepresentation, theft, bribery,
or eavesdropping with illegal devices.
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Trademark Infringement

 Trademark is logo, package design, phrase, sound, or word that enables consumer to
differentiate one company’s product from another’s

 The Lanham Act of 1946 (also known as the Trademark Act) defines the use of a
trademark, the process for obtaining a trademark from the Patent and Trademark Office,
and the penalties associated with trademark infringement.

 Trademark owner can prevent others from using the same mark or a confusingly similar
mark on a product’s label

 Organizations frequently sue one another over the use of a trademark in a Web site or
domain name

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Cybersquatting

 Cybersquatters
 Register domain names for famous trademarks or company names
 Hope the trademark’s owner will buy the domain name for a large sum of
money

 To curb or circumvent cybersquatting:

 protect a trademark by registering numerous domain names and variations as
soon as it wants to develop a Web presence
 for example, UVXYZ.com, UVXYZ.org, and UVXYZ.info

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Cybersquatting (cont’d.)

 Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

 a nonprofit corporation responsible for managing the Internet’s domain name
system
 Several top-level domains (.com, .edu, edu., .gov, .int, .mil, .net, .org, aero, .biz,
.coop, .info, .museum, .name, .pro, .asis, .cat, .mobi, .tel, and .travel)

 Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act

 allows trademark owners to challenge foreign cybersquatters
 trademark holders can seek civil damages

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Summary
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Online Resources

 https://dinus.ac.id/repository/docs/ajar/ethics_in_information_technology2c_5th_ed._0_.pdf
 https://www.slideshare.net/HowellToribio/chapter-6-49083445?
from_m_app=android&fbclid=IwAR1AmWnYqxzztY64g37pgfokO11Io6CFDoPevnuHmh
bzWMtvXiOTCM2u1CQ
 https://image.slidesharecdn.com/intellectualpropertyforentrepreneurs-
180906034656/95/intellectual-property-for-entrepreneurs-58-638.jpg?cb=1536205687
 https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-
XhbaTJqxfVQ/V3s7HipXXjI/AAAAAAAAAc0/k42dmrnSWIAVTgQe2QuaSRTuYgtUbm
vZACLcB/s1600/copyright-trademark-patent-designs-900x514.png
 https://ocpatentlawyer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Four-Types-of-Intellectual-
Property.jpg
 https://enterslice.com/learning/all-about-intellectual-property-rights/

Ethics in Information Technology