1. Intellectual
Property Rights
By Helen Szeto
ETEC 531
June 2009

2. What are Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs)?

3. Intellectual Property Rights are…
• creations of the mind
• items of information or knowledge
• unlimited # of copies at different
locations anywhere in the world
• limited duration by copyrights

4. What form do Intellectual
Property Rights (IPRs) take?

5. literary & artistic works

6. symbols, names, images &
designs used in commerce

7. Intellectual Property divided
into 2 categories :
Industrial
Property

8. Inventions (patents)
eª and a
QuickTim decompressor TIFF (Unc QuickTimeª and a
om
essed)
(Uncompr see this picture.
are needed pressed) decompres
to see this so
a Tor F
and pres
s IF
needed to picture. r
meª com e. are
i r TIFF
ckT ) de ictu (U Qu
Qui ressed this p are n ncomp ickTime
p se e
om eede resse ª and
Unceded to d to d
F(
TIF are ne see ) decoma
this
pictupressor
re.

9. trademarks

10. industrial designs
QuickTimeª and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

11. geographic indications of
source

12. Intellectual Property divided
into 2 categories:
Copyright

13. Literary Works
• Literary works:
– novels
– poems & plays
– films, musical works

14. • Artistic works:
– drawings
– paintings
– photographs & sculptures
– architectural designs

15. COPYRIGHT
• Attempted to accommodate cyberspace
by merely calling it a conveyance
(another format for content of
expression)

16. John Perry Barlow
• Protection is something entirely
different. How can we protect it?

17. Treaties
• Paris Convention for Protection of Industrial
Property in 1883
• One of 1st IP treaties (patents)
• Paris, France March 20, 1883
• Belgium, Brazil, France, Guatemala, Italy, the
Netherlands, Portugal, El Salvador, Serbia,
Spain and Switzerland.
• 173 members, Aug 2008

18. Treaties
• Berne Convention in 1886
• International agreement governing
copyright
• Berne, Switzerland
• 164 members, Sept 2008

19. Digital Content
• Ease in altering or forgery
• Ease in rearrangement, construction,
recycling
• Preventive measures too late
• Can’t contain digital data same as
analog

21. Lawrence Lessig
• Copyright always @ war with
technology
• New technology has made copying
easier

22. Postmodern Aesthetic
• Encourages electicism & multiplicity
over any dominant or ‘original’ style
• Accepted practice to appropriate other
artists’ works
• Originality no longer possible
• Artist = processor of info or manipulator
of found material

23. Postmodern Aesthetic
• Digital technology = appropriation
devices
• Scanner
• Sampler
• Digital data bank plundered

24. Postmodern Aesthetic
• 1980s
– New approach to creativity & intellectual
property

25. Andrew Goodwin
• Sample & Hold
• Sample-based music culture

26. Walter Benjamin
• Distribution of artwork through a
network
• ‘aura’ of original given way to culture of
copying & hands on approach
• Collapse of distance

27. • New era
• New criteria of creativity
– DJs & musicians assessed not on
originality but on skill & judgment in
assembling collages of found materials

28. Public Enemy

29. De La Soul

30. Problem
• New concept of authorship
• Law of copyright
• Suing musicians & DJs

31. Solution
• Share of royalties (fee)
• MACOS --> no legal ramifications
• D.I.Y. ---> DJ Spooky
---> Robin Mackay (quotes)

32. John Perry Barlow
• Info is experienced not possessed
• Fluidity of info = copyright law
outmoded

33. Shareware & open source
software
• Collectivist notion
VS.
• Commitment to intellectual property as
commodity
• ‘collective intelligence’ by Pierre Levy

34. Sean Cubist
• Sharing of info, sharing of creative
process as major social benefit

35. IP Law
• Engaged with new media technologies
• Threat to copyright

36. Walter Benjamin & Timothy
Druckery
• ‘optical unconscious’
• ‘collective vision’
• Digital media as form of collage raise
issues to do with narrative as culture
given

37. Les Manovich
• Cultural ‘transcoding’
– Computers & culture constantly change
one another
– Speeding up of process

38. Gregory Ulmer
• New aesthetics theorist
• gone is Aristotle’s neat, beginning,
middle & end
• Always in network, in between
• Gone are formulas
• Choreography --> transitory method
• Instead of reading theories, we reinvent
instead

39. • Artists & students become producers as
well as consumers of theory
• Draw on past & reinvent future
• Money as reservoir for creative
information

40. Describe the ways in which IPRs inspire
and inhibit innovation.

41. Inspire
• Jefferson designing copyright system
– Assuring widespread distribution of
thought, not profit
– Libraries buy books, rewarding authors
• Ideas become available to public

42. Inspire
• U.S. Congress given power to ‘promote’
progress of science…
• 1st copyright act (1790) invented to
encourage open circulation of
knowledge
• Provide incentive for artists, scientists &
writers to create original works

43. Inspire
• Info ownership = monopoly for
publishers
• 1793 1st US patent law
• Copyrights & patents in theory; legal
protection of IP

44. Inspire
• Open source software & Linux
– Open knowledge response to software
monopolies
– No fear of patent infringements
– Give users absolute freedom
– General Public License GPL

45. Inspire
• Protect stealing from others
• Safeguard for consumers
• Incentives to creativity
• Market creation

46. Inhibit
• Commercialization of IP throughout
19th century undermine original intent
• IPR = monopolisitic control, trade
secrecy rather than open promotion of
science & tech marked corporate
practice

47. Inhibit
• Property can be infinitely reproduced &
instantaneously distributed w/out
cost/knowledge/possession
• HOW DO YOU PROTECT IT?

48. Inhibit
• Law protected physical expression
• While technology may undo law,
technology offers methods for restoring
creative rights
• Info wants to be free, to change,
unconstrained, no final cut

49. Inhibit
• Copyright makes no accommodations
whatever for expressions
• Patents --> unrestricted monopoly rights
• Innovation = process by which
knowledge advances

50. Inhibit
• IPRs to protect yesterday’s innovation allow
innovator to control future innovation
• “anti-commons” --> PATENTS
– No justification for restricting access to public
domain
– Patents increase transaction costs of developing
new innovation

51. Inhibit
• Lawrence Lessig
– The Future of Ideas

52. Inhibit
• Economists Michele Boldrin & David K.
Levine
– Perfectly competitive markets capable of
rewarding/stimulating innovation
– Example: fashion world
– Monopoly rights unnecessary for
innovation

53. References