Week 5 Lecture - Intellectual Property

This week blog post would be related to the lecturer that given by Mr. Faizal and this week (week 5) lecture was about Intellectual Property.

So what is intellectual property?

Basically, intellectual property refers to the creations, inventions of literary and artistic works, logos, names, images that can be used in commerce. For example, book, music, film, logo for business could be intellectual properties.

We do need lawsuit to protect our intellectual property since we created it by our own minds and ideas.

The lecture did mention one good point, if there was no protection for the things we created then why do we still need to create new things? Thus, we now have several laws to protect all creations and inventions such as Copyright Act. The first copyright act has been implied on 400 years ago - Statue of Queen Anne (1710). It encourages people to write more books and it also known as the origin of copyright. Then, more copyright act or law have been formed in many countries. The lecture mostly discussed the possible law or act that protect creative works. The common protections we have to know are Copyright Law, Trademark, and Patent.

Next, we commonly see the law that protect all the creations is Copyright Law. It applies to creative works such as music, art printing, books and it do not require creators to register. The creative work would automatically obtain the protection once it is published in public. The protection lasts for 70 years and the creative work would be released to public after author's death,  we call it as "Public Domain". While corporate authorship lasts longer which is 95 to 120 years. The protection duration would be varied based on different countries' copyright law or act. Creative works which fall into Public Domain are free from copyright and the creative works are available to everyone, we could reuse them freely.

On the other hand, another protection we should not left out is Trademark. Trademark is different from Copyright Law. It applies to sign, logo, or picture which represents the brand and company and usually for commercial purposes. For example, McDonald's®. The ® mark behind the name refers to the name McDonald's® has been registered as a trade mark and others need to grant permission from McDonald's® if they want to use the name in other purposes. Another significant way to identify whether the creative works are protected by Trademark is looking at ™. ™ refers to the unregistered trade mark used to promote goods. Besides, SM are for unregistered service mark used to promote services.

After that, Patent refers to a set of rights that protect the inventions which are technologically based. Patent protects technology stuffs, gadgets, or even technology ideas and it expires after 20 years. What would happen if the protection is expired? The inventor could offer to sell his or her invention or for businesses would come out with similar inventions.

On the other hand, we are the "users" of all the inventions and creative works then, what are the things we should aware? Can we use the copyrighted materials without breaching the lawsuit?

There is a set of rights titled "Fair Use". We can use a copyrighted material in the situation of fair use such as education purpose. But, the condition is you have to remain the nature of the copyrighted material. Furthermore, Fair Use allows others to use the copyrighted material especially music not more than 30 seconds. If exceed the limit, you are against the rights. 

Then, things that we need to aware are Digital Rights Management (DRM) and End User License Agreement. DRM refers to the embedded technology on the digital copyrighted materials and protect ways to access to the materials.  It aims to restrict and control how you use the materials. For example, certain CDs with this technology would not allow you to copy all the tracks into your computer. We users could only play the CDs on certain devices. Nevertheless, End User License Agreement is the document stated users buy the permission to use the material but they do not own the copy. It can usually be found during the first time access to the copyrighted material such as games, softwares, and also services. We need to agree it first then, only can use the material therefore, always read through and identify the risks while using the material. 

In conclusion, the rights that protect creative works and inventions would limit us to obtain the information. It is because we could not reuse the copyrighted materials and we would have limitation to access to the information especially the one with DRM protection. However, all these kinds of rights are needed to protect the original creators and inventors to make sure they have the greatest benefits. We also could not simply make fun of the original creative works.