Law
Intellectual Law
Intellectual law refers to the legal framework that governs the protection of intellectual property, including copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. It encompasses laws and regulations that safeguard the rights of creators and innovators, ensuring that their original works and inventions are not unlawfully used or exploited by others.
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11 Key excerpts on "Intellectual Law"
eBook - ePub- John Nockleby, John T. Nockleby, John Nockleby, John T. Nockleby(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
7Intellectual PropertyF. Jay DoughertyProfessor of Law (Copyright Law and Trademark Law), Loyola Law SchoolKarl M. ManheimProfessor of Law (Patent Law), Loyola Law SchoolThe term intellectual property is a relatively modern phrase, usually referring to several rather different bodies of law, namely, copyright, trademark, and patent law. Various other related business torts, such as trade secret law or unfair competition, might also be considered within this rubric. However, this chapter will focus on the three areas of law at the core of what we call intellectual property—copyright, trademark, and patent law.Copyright provides a set of exclusive rights in original works of expressive authorship. Patents also provide exclusive rights for new and useful products and processes. Trademark law applies primarily to distinctive words, symbols, and other devices that indicate the source of goods or services, and protects them from use by competitors of confusingly similar marks. This chapter will consider each of those bodies of law in somewhat more detail.Normally, when one thinks of property, tangible objects come to mind, either real property (land) or personal property (other physical assets). By contrast, intellectual property deals with intangibles—creations of the mind. These are often considered forms of property because of the rules that protect ownership and use of the creations. As with ownership of real property, these rules provide a legal basis to exclude others from certain conduct or uses of the subject matter. Thus, it is not unusual for an injunction, that is, a court order to do something or to refrain from doing something, to be awarded where an infringement, or even merely a likely infringement, is found.It is not uncommon for nonexperts, including journalists, to confuse these different bodies of law. For example, one sees a news story about a legal dispute over the title of a film or the name of a pop band.1
eBook - PDFIntellectual Properties and the Protection of Fictional Characters
Copyright, Trademark, or Unfair Competition?
- Dorothy J. Howell(Author)
- 1990(Publication Date)
- Praeger(Publisher)
Two points are essential: First, the intellectual property must somehow have been rendered tangible (a book, painting, phonograph record, audio- or videotape, computer printout, and so on—subject only to the limitations of human imagination). Second, the associated rights and other principles may be re- tained or transferred or lost independently of one another, pri- marily through contractual arrangements, usually licensing agreements. In most senses the law of intellectual property is at the very least reminiscent of the law of tangible personal property, even though the underlying idea and all the so-called properties in it will remain intangible. Trademarks, like per- sonal property, can be abandoned voluntarily by act of the proprietor or, uniquely, involuntarily through public use. According to legal tradition, case law is further categorized. In England the early courts of law became so bound up in form that the true substance of a case was unfairly lost in the in- tricacies of the draconian procedural constraints. A separate clerical jurisprudence, administered by the chancellor, arose. Today, cases are still distinguished as being "in law" or "in equity." Cases in equity, such as those involving questions of 6 Introduction to Intellectual Property Law intellectual property, are characterized by an often titanic men- tal struggle to find the proper balance within the maze of con- flicting rights and duties before the court. Basic fairness is the key to equity, though lawyers are strangely loath to use the word. "It's not fair" is the unrecog- nized whine of Everyman at his worst. "It is an inequity" is an articulate plea for justice.
eBook - PDFTechnology Law
Australian and International Perspectives
- Marcus Smith, Gregor Urbas(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
184 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 9 9 Intellectual property 185 Introduction Intellectual property involves the legal protection of inventions and other creative products. Its main categories are patents, copyright and trade marks, with related forms of protection also covering designs, circuit layouts, plant breeders’ rights, domain names and trade secrets. Some intellectual property rights attach automatically to a novel invention or creation, while others require registration in a publicly administered system, depending on the jurisdiction. Protection is typically limited to a specified time, with extension possible in some systems. What is offered to creators is an incentive to make potentially beneficial advances available to the public, rather than be kept secret or for private use only, by way of a limited monopoly. The exclusive right that is granted has a number of components, but the main benefit it confers is the opportunity to exploit economically the invention or creation under a statutory monopoly for the prescribed length of time, after which it becomes generally available to the public on equal terms. For example, a technical innovation in car design might be achieved by one manufacturer, and introduced to the market under patent as well as other forms of protection, but is able to be adopted by competitors after the protections lapse. Until then, competitors may seek to introduce comparable innovations, but if they do so by too closely copying or exploiting the original and protected version, they will be at risk of infringement claims. The enforcement of intellectual property rights thus depends heavily on actual or potential litigation, adding a layer of legal process to any registration requirements. Not everybody seeks to protect their intellectual property.
eBook - PDF- Alexandra George(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
59 This definition is hardly illuminating. ‘The property of your mind or intel- lect’: what does that mean? It would seem to suggest that any thought, idea or object of communication becomes intellectual property, yet a core tenet of copyright law is that it does not confer rights over ideas. The definition then falls back on an enumerated list of objects of regula- tion and component doctrines. Not only does IP Australia’s definition of intellectual property imply legal rights that are broader than are actually offered by Australian intellectual property laws and international intel- lectual property treaties, but its reference to a list of intellectual proper- ty’s constituents is also misleadingly superficial. Each of the terms in the 59 IP Australia website: http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/ip/index.shtml [accessed 19 January 2004]. THE DIFFICULTY OF DEFINING ‘INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY’ 59 given list would need further clarification to contribute meaningfully to the overall definition, and the list does not shed light on what it is that determines why something will or will not be categorized as intellectual property. This definition is therefore quite unenlightening, but it is also typical of definitions offered in an attempt to explain the term ‘intellec- tual property’. Even international treaties that govern intellectual property can be obtuse in this way. According to the WIPO’s definition of ‘intellectual property’: [it] shall include the rights relating to: literary, artistic and scientific works, • performances of performing artists, phonograms, and broadcasts, • inventions in all fields of human endeavor, • scientific discoveries, • industrial designs, • trademarks, service marks, and commercial names and designations, • protection against unfair competition, and all other rights resulting • from intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary or artistic fields.
- Carl Roper(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
183 14 Intellectual Property Rights Patents, Copyrights, and Trade Secrets An individual has certain intellectual property rights (IPR) that derive from a patent, copyright, or trade secret. Such individual may wholly own them and do with such rights as they please, and many do, via licensing them to various manufacturers and companies to produce and sell the prod-ucts, allowing a royalty type of revenue to accrue to the initial owner. Inventions and their impend-ing patents, copyrights on books, records and CDs, and trade secrets of a company are items in need of protection. Protection through the law can be misunderstood, but is necessary to establish an owner’s legal rights to the product, no matter what that product may be. This chapter is concerned with the various laws and what they say. Where appropriate, the reader will be directed to further information that cannot be included here due to its data size and level of detail. In the publication International Crime Threat Assessment , the White House outlined succinctly, the threat and impact of patent information, breach of copyright and IPRs: Most intellectual property rights (IPR) affecting US businesses involve the theft of trade secrets and copyright, trademark, and patent violations. Criminal violations of intellectual property rights— particularly the sale of counterfeit or illegally manufactured products—distort international trade, undermine the legitimate marketplace, and cause extensive revenue losses to legitimate U.S. industries. The explosion of digitization and the Internet have further enabled IPR violators to easily copy and illegally distribute trade secrets, trademarks, and logos.
eBook - PDFThe Right to Repair
Reclaiming the Things We Own
- Aaron Perzanowski(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
In theory at least, intellectual property law is meant to serve the interests of the public; the financial fortunes of rights holders are a secondary concern. Patents and copyrights are intended to establish legal incentives to create new works and inventions. But if those incentives are too strong, they increase costs for the public without providing any additional social benefit. 1 If a pharmaceutical company would have invested in developing its new drug in exchange for ten years of monopoly pricing, giving it twenty years of exclusivity is a terrible bargain for the public. Trademarks serve a different purpose. They are meant to make it easier for consumers to navigate the market- place by preventing confusingly similar names and logos. By doing so, the law is supposed to encourage competition, not hinder it. When brands function as reliable indicators of source, it’s easier to find the products we want and avoid the ones we don’t. Finally, trade secrets serve the dual functions of encoura- ging firms to develop valuable information while maintaining a boundary between healthy competition and corporate espio- nage. None of these legal rights are absolute. To reflect that, each of these bodies of law contains internal limitations, designed to cabin their scope and avoid collateral damage to other social values. This chapter will describe both how device makers try to leverage IP rights to restrict repair and why those assertions are, as a rule, inconsistent with a proper understanding of the law. Regardless of their ultimate merits though, IP claims have a chilling effect on repair. Litigation is uncertain, mounting a defense is expensive, and device makers enjoy massive resource advantages over consumers and repair providers. 2 Copyrights Copyright law provides authors exclusive rights over their crea- tive works, allowing them to capture the market value of books, music, film, art, and software.
eBook - PDFIntellectual Property
Economic and Legal Dimensions of Rights and Remedies
- Roger D. Blair, Thomas F. Cotter(Authors)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
two The Law and Economics of IPRs In this chapter, we provide an overview of basic patent, trade secret, copy- right, and trademark law, and a general sense of the ways in which courts enforce these rights. Our principal focus will be on U.S. law, although from time to time we will examine other countries’ laws and how they sometimes differ from U.S. law. With respect to each of these four bodies of law, we first provide a brief description of the legal rights at issue, and then follow with a discussion of the standard economic justifications for, and challenges to, these rights. Finally, we review the debate over whether intellectual property rights (IPRs) are better protected by property or liability rules. patents and trade secrets Inventions and other industrial know-how sometimes may be subject to ownership under patent or trade secret law. 1 Because the same invention may not be protected by both patent and trade secret law, and because patents usually confer a more robust form of protection, an inventor will usually choose patent over trade secret protection when either is available. In this section, we examine the scope of these bodies of law and their suggested economic underpinnings. 1 To be precise, inventions are protectable under the law of utility patents. Novel and dis- tinct plant varieties are patentable in the United States for the same twenty-year period applicable to utility patents, under the Plant Patent Act, 35 U.S.C. §§ 161–4, and the Plant Variety Protection Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 2321–2582. Plants also may be protected under utility patent law. See J.E.M. AG Supply, Inc. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred Int’l, Inc., 534 U.S. 124 (2001). Designs that satisfy the three conditions of novelty, ornamentality, and nonobviousness are protectable for a fourteen-year period under the law of design patents, see 35 U.S.C. §§ 171–3. Other countries have analogous laws extending patent-like or sui generis protec- tion to plant varieties and designs.
eBook - ePubInterfaces On Trial
Intellectual Property And Interoperability In The Global Software Industry
- Jonathan Band(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Taylor & Francis(Publisher)
2 The Intellectual Property Law ContextThe preceding chapter provided the technology and industry context of the interoperability debate; this chapter provides the intellectual property law context. Two forms of intellectual property—patents and copyrights—bear directly on the interoperability debate. Both of these legal systems have a two hundred-year history in the United States. Two other forms of intellectual property—trade secrecy and semiconductor chip protection—bear indirectly on the interoperability debate. Numerous treatises and thousands of law review articles have examined intellectual property in detail. As with the review of the technology and industry context, this chapter can provide only a general overview of the key legal principles necessary for understanding the interoperability debate. Copyright is treated more fully because the application of copyright to software interface specifications forms the core of the interoperability debate.The Fundamental Policies of the Intellectual Property System
The Patent Act and the Copyright Act both derive from the United States Constitution, which in Article I, Section 8, empowers Congress "[t]o promote the Progress of science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries ..." The Supreme Court has explained that "the economic policy" behind this provision "is the conviction that encouragement of individual efforts by personal gain is the best way to advance the public welfare through ... Science and the useful Arts."1 The Court has described the patent system as embodying "a carefully crafted bargain for encouraging the creation and disclosure of new, useful, and nonobvious advances in technology and design in return for the exclusive right to practice the invention for a period of years."2
eBook - PDFProfit From Your Idea
How to Make Smart Licensing Deals
- Richard Stim(Author)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- NOLO(Publisher)
Each type of intellectual property gives you certain rights. For example, if a U.S. patent is issued for your invention, you have the exclusive right to make, use, and sell the invention within the United States. If the name of your invention qualifies as a trademark, you have the exclusive right to use the name on certain products. It is these rights that are the subject of a license. Because legal protection can enhance the value of your invention, we suggest you evaluate every aspect of your creation in order to acquire the broadest possible protection. SKIP AHEAD If you already own a patent for your invention or if you understand the type of intellectual property that you own in your invention, you can skip this chapter and go to Chapter 3, which discusses owner- ship rights. General Rules for Legal Protection of Inventions A basic rule of intellectual property law is that various features of the same invention may be protected by different types of intellectual property. In general: • The functional features of your invention (how it works and what it does) may be protectable under: ■ utility patent laws, and ■ trade secret laws. • The nonfunctional features (the decorative appearance, artistic expression, or packaging) may be protectable under: ■ trademark laws ■ design patent laws, and ■ copyright laws. The Public Domain When an invention, an artwork, or a symbol used on a product isn’t protected by intellectual property law, it’s considered to be in the public domain. A creation that is in the public domain is free for all to use and may be copied. Inventions that aren’t protected by intellectual property laws are in the public domain. 48 | PROFIT FROM YOUR IDEA Functional vs. Nonfunctional Intellectual property rights are often divided between functional elements (protected by utility patents and trade secrets) and nonfunctional elements (protected by trademarks, copyrights, and design patents).
eBook - PDFTechnoscientific Research
Methodological and Ethical Aspects
- Roman Z. Morawski(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
Intellectual property cannot sustain without advanced intervention of the state. The period of legal protection is the same always and everywhere. The period of protection is arbitrarily defined by the legislator. 51 N. S. Kinsella, Against Intellectual Property, 2008, pp. 27–28. 52 ibid., pp. 14–15. 18.4 Critical analysis of legal protection of economic author’s . . . 401 intellectual effort of an inventor who receives for this effort a prize in the form of a patent, and the effort of the creator of a theory, who cannot receive such a prize 53 . The basic social function of property rights, in the case of material goods, is to prevent conflicts related to their rarity; those rights can fulfil this function if the ownership boundaries are defined in a clear, impartial and unambiguous way. The extension of this reasoning on ideas is problematic because they are not rare: a sin- gle idea can be used by an unlimited number of users at the same time. Since there is no economic rarity, there is no source of conflict, and there is no justification for introducing exclusivity because it can create the state of artificial rarity of the ideas under consideration . 54 There are attempts to justify the legal protection of IP, based on its interpretation in terms of a contract between the creator and the users of a work. They are, however, problematic because this contract binds only the contracting parties, while laws de- fining protection of IP apply to all citizens of a given state. Even if it could be as- sumed that purchasing a book is equivalent to the conclusion of a contract between the copyright holder of this book and its buyer, this would not imply contractual obli- gations towards third parties 55 . If, for example, the wife of the recipient of a book of poems would read and remember one of them, then she could publish the poem under her name without violating the contract concluded by her husband.
eBook - PDFFreedom of Artistic Expression
Essays on Culture and Legal Censure
- Paul Kearns(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
If ideas without any concrete expression were protectable, evidential matters would be difficult to resolve, and would inevitably undermine copyright law’s practicality. 39 The Convention’s method of working is examined briefly later on in this essay. See further, AL Sterling, World Copyright Law, 3rd edn (London, Sweet & Maxwell, 2008). 40 In French, they are termed ‘oeuvres d’esprit’. The physiological implications of this term were obviously intentional. 41 See further, Caroline Carreau, ‘Merite et droit d’auteur’ (1981) 109 Revue Internationale du Droit d’Auteur 8. Hers is an informative, if rather idealised, account of law and artistic quality. The Intellectual Property Rights of Artists 137 is arguably always present in an original work, implicitly if not explicitly. 42 Broadly speaking, notions of creativity are semantically allied to notions con-nected with the artistic, so in the USA and France, where creativity is important in an original work, artistic considerations might be expected to be more preva-lent in the general copyright context than in the UK. When specifically ‘artistic works’ are legally examined, as we shall see a little later in this essay, courts inevitably have to address the difficult question of the precise meaning of the epithet ‘artistic’. 43 In UK law, the artistic ‘character’ of a work is to be judicially discerned independent of artistic ‘quality’ or ‘merit’, except in the exceptional case of ‘works of artistic craftsmanship’. 44 Different judges will have different ideas about what artistic character is. 45 The pressing problem of needing a con-crete and finalised judicial definition of art in the copyright context may be insoluble as well as intractable. In all three jurisdictions studied here, law court judges do not have the luxury of art philosophers in being able to leave such a definition open-ended.
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