1. Running head: INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 1
Innovations of Copyright and Intellectual Properties
Phoebe Spence Wilson
INF/103
August 12, 2013
Edwyne Duffie

2. INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 2
Innovations of Copyright and Intellectual Properties
Even though it is our own beloved Constitution that clearly states “The Congress shall
have Power . . . To promote the Progress ofScience and useful Arts, by securing for limited
Times to Authors and Inventors theexclusive Right to their respective Writingsand Discoveries .
. . ,” our nation has continued to be divided almost equally for many years (Gilbert, 2011,
para.1). It was because of this constitutional authority that in 1790, Congress passed the first
United States Patent and Copyright Acts. With all due respect, it has been 223 years since this
was written. I am not so sure that our forefathers, as ahead of their time as they only may have
been, could have foreseen where our technology has taken us or the great lengths that we could
be headed to (Gilbert, 2011). Perhaps where we should focus our innovations next is on our
country itself. There are basically three types of economic protection for invention and creative
expression, which are copyright, patents, and trademarks.
Copyrightable works can be anything from literature, music, and motion pictures to
choreographed dance numbers, playwrights, and architecture (Copyright Basics, 2012). Patents
are issued for inventive works and trademarks are used for different branding, which could be
four different kinds of marks.
The two primary types of marks that can be registered with the USPTO are:
Trademarks - used by their owners to identify goods, that is, physical commodities,
which may be natural, manufactured, or produced, and which are sold or otherwise
transported or distributed via interstate commerce.
Service marks - used by their owners to identify services, that is, intangible activities,
which are performed by one person for the benefit of a person or persons other than
himself, either for pay or otherwise (Trademarks, 2012, para.3)

3. INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 3
Application Steps
There are three simple steps for copyrights. Of course, you must make sure the name of
your product has not already been taken, register your product online by giving your information
to the U.S. copyright office, and pay a 35 dollar registration fee to have your copyright approved
within a reasonable amount of time, at approximately just the couple months needed for
processing (Copyright Basics, 2012). Patents seem to be a little more difficult than getting your
work copyrighted. They can actually deny your application more often than accept it and it is
very much recommended that an attorney files it for you, whereas with a copyright a lawyer is
unnecessary (Patent Process, 2012). Trademark registration is almost the same as the patent
application, except it takes much longer. The same United States Patent and Trademark Office
receives your application and after 3 to 4 months will contact you for review or corrections and
then another 6 months until a decision is made (Trademarks, 2012).
Application Statistics
The United States Copyright Office within the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.,
receives approximately 600,000 copyright applications a year. There wouldn‟t be any pending
applications for copyright simply because a copyright is an automatic right. If you apply for a
copyright, you are automatically approved, as long as the work is in fact original (Copyright
Basics, 2012). In 2012, there were 576,763 patent applications submitted to the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office (Patent Process, 2012). The 1.2 million plus of patent pending applications
shown here include patents that are still pending from previous years.To file for a trademark is
the most expensive at anywhere from $275 to $375 per item. If the trademark is intended to be
used in commerce there are additional fees on a per case basis. A portion of all of these fees are

4. INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 4
non-refundable for processing. Some total registration fees are non-refundable even if your
patent or trademark does not get approved (Trademarks, 2012).
Restrictive Technologies
Copyright infringement. These restrictive technologies although seemingly new, have
been developing since the 1950s. We have been at this for years. In the 1950s and 1960s,
publishers battled the Xerox 914 photocopier and many other manufacturers creating the
copyright infringement „crime‟, the music industry in the 1970s fought the use of blank cassette
tapes claiming „hometaping is killing the music industry‟ (Griffin, 2012). According to Griffin,
only ten percent of sound recordings that were prior to World War II have been released from
private hands for public access, the percentage drops to nearly zero for anything released before
1920, and from 1890 to 1964, only 14 percent of recordings have been released for public access
(2012).Even libraries and sound preservation boards are even having a near impossible time
attempting to move around these copyright laws just for the sake of preserving our cultural
history.“…cultural history is adversely affected by the terms of protection provided sound
recordings under current copyright law” (Griffin, 2012, para.18). Websites, online cloud storage,
desktop cloud storage programs, digital forums, peer-to-peer software, and many physical
internet distributors
. . . help content creators by allowing them to make, promote, and distribute their works
to audiences more easily, and offering them several new options to reaching the
marketplace without selling their copyrights to the traditional dominant distributors like
publishers, record labels, or movie studios. An artist may still opt to partner with an
incumbent intermediary, but these new services give the artist a choice and offer most
efficient ways for content owners of all kind to distribute works (Griffin, 2012, para.18).

5. INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 5
There isalso the Creative Commons Organization, where individuals with all, some, or no
copyrights reserved may showcase their creative works or simply provide it for the public for
free just to be able to get their name out (Bowles, 2010).
Piracy Laws. Now more recently, Peer-to-Peer, otherwise known as P2P, file sharing
technology has been labeled as illegal and we now have piracy laws to adhere to, preventing
unauthorized and illegal downloading. The P2P networking should be nothing more than a new
technology that could be paving the way for our future in technological innovations (Griffin,
2012). There are many positive, functional, and even educational ways to use P2P sharing. For
example, a university staff or student body could utilize for the distribution of electronic
textbooks. This technology will not be recognized if Digital Rights Management, also known as
DRM, stifles our potential.
Digital rights management. DRM is exactly what it says by its name, management of
our rights to digital media. This can be media that simply has just been created and released or
media that we have already purchased. Some companies do not even let you read some of their
books you purchase through their store on any other devices. Kindle for example, you can only
use on other Amazon devices. Thanks only to the invention of cloud storage are we now even
able to use multiple devices. When kindle first came out a second purchase of the eBook was
necessary.
DRM gives media and technology companies the ultimate control over every aspect of
what people can do with their media: where they can use it, on what devices, using what
apps, for how long, and any other conditions the retailer wants to set. Digital media has
many advantages over traditional analog media, but DRM attempts to make every

6. INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 6
possible use of digital goods something that must be granted permission for (Defective by
Design, para.5)
Mobile technology integrations.It might be understandable to have these restrictive
technologies in place if they were created with other technologies and devices in mind, but
publishers of textbooks are so quick to place restriction that the software companies and mobile
technology cannot keep up. For example, there are students at University of Phoenix that cannot
download the eBooks that they paid for to their tablets because the latest Adobe Reader program
does not have the correct software for tablets built yet that supports DRM integration. They must
read on their laptops or print the whole book out. Granted a student has in fact found a way to
print to a file as a different format after signing into their DRM school profile and transfer to
their tablet that way, but that just shows that even with whatever restriction is set upon us, people
will always find a way if it is not convenient or they simply do not agree with the regulated use.
In conclusion, onlybig industry and global business are benefiting from the intellectual
property restrictions. Our first thought is probably that this might be helping our economy, but
considering most mid- to lower-level management and below is mostly outsourced to different
countries in many top companies, it is definitely not creating U.S. jobs. Also, if these companies
are feeding the economy, why are we still in so much debt? What this quote is saying from the
World Intellectual Property Organization is the GLOBAL economy is being helped, not the
United States economy and it would be nice if we could worry about ourselves for a
change.WIPO Director General Francis Gurrysaid “A press conference in Geneva provided us
very little reassurance of individual or small business gain and focused mainly on international
big business. As in previous years, demand for WIPO‟s international IP filing systems increased
despite a weak economic climate…As we begin to see signs of a recovery, those companies that

7. INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 7
built strong portfolios of intangible assets during the downturn will benefit the most from new
market opportunities” (2013, para.1).
Then there is an astonishing quote that has delightfully come from the United States
Copyright office themselves: “We [also] live in an age of great technological innovation. This
not only affects the ways in which authors may disseminate creative works and consumers may
enjoy them—it affects the very means by which works are created and knowledge is accessed.
And it calls for a robust legal framework for the 21st century—a framework by which authors
are respected, investments (both intellectual and financial) are encouraged, enforcement
measures are responsive, and limitations and exceptions are meaningful” (2012, para.3).Perhaps
the reinvention of our thoughts and ideas has somehow provoked some to realize we are not
living in the time the constitution was written anymore. Times they have changed.

8. INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 8
References
Bowles, M.D. (2010). Introduction to Computer Literacy. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint
Education, Inc.
Defective by Design. (2012).What is DRM? Retrieved from
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm_digital_restrictions_management
Gilbert, R. (2011, June). A World without Intellectual Property? A Review of Michele Boldrin
and David Levine's Against Intellectual Monopoly. Journal of Economic Literature,
49(2), 421-432. Retrieved from EBSCOhost EconLit Database.
Griffin, Jodie. (2012, October). The Economic Impact of Copyright: A presentation to TPP
negotiators. Public Knowledge. Retrieved from http://publicknowledge.org/economic-
impact-copyright-presentation-tpp-negotia
McDermott, A. J. (2012, March). Copyright: Regulation Out of Line with Our Digital Reality?
Information Technology & Libraries, 31(1), 7-20. Retrieved from EBSCOhost Academic
Search Premier Database.
Trademarks. (2012, May). The United States Patent and Trademark Office. Retrieved from
http://www.uspto.gov/inventors/trademarks.jsp
U.S. Copyright Office. (2012). Copyright Office Celebrates World Intellectual Property Day
2012. Retrieved from http://www.copyright.gov/docs/wipo2012.html
Walker, M. (2009). Economists say copyright and patent laws are killing innovation; hurting
economy. Newsroom. Retrieved from http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/13656.aspx
WIPO Press Conference in Geneva. (2013, March). Strong Growth in Demand for Intellectual
Property Rights in 2012. World Intellectual Property Organization. Retrieved from

9. INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 9
http://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2013/article_0006.html
Image 1: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/US-CopyrightOffice
-Seal.svg/480px-US-CopyrightOffice-Seal.svg.png
Image 2: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/US
-PatentTrademarkOffice-Seal.svg/480px-US-PatentTrademarkOffice-Seal.svg.png
Image 3: http://pravum.kg/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/wipo.png