Introduction
Protection for software has increased in the past
fifteen years; however to what extent it is protected varies from country to
country as well the implementation of
the protection differ by country. Intellectual property gives the right for
the owner of trademark, patent or copyright to benefit from his creation,
Intellectual property is the creative work which is protected by law and gives
the creator financial benefits, this is a human right and its important to
encourage creative people to come up with new creative things that benefit the
society. Without Intellectual property protection, people will not be credited
for their creativity and achievements. Still, laws and regulations alone are
not enough to protect computer software from piracy; awareness and enforcement
of the law should exist to protect intellectual property.
As software became a very important part of the
information age and is being used everywhere and by everyone, creative people
who develop that software should be given the right to benefit from their
creation, as its their Intellectual Property.
I Strongly believe that the cost of registration for
trademarks and patents should be minimal, to allow every creative person to
benefit from his creation, and to eliminate the possibly of big companies
harming small companies or individuals by taking their invention, just because
they couldn’t pay the registration fees. As well, if we reach a level were
trademark, patent and copyright laws are unified worldwide; software piracy
will decrease, especially by showing developing countries the benefit they get
by forcing such laws. In my region there is no public awareness of the benefits
of these laws, in addition to that being member of a developing country, I used
to believe that all these laws were set to protect the developed countries
trades in our region.
Copyright
Copyright in general is a power given to the author
or creator that allows only him to copy, duplicate, distribute or change the
work. Copyright “protects the expression of the idea, but not the idea itself”
(Adams & Mccrindle, 2008); it is a legalized monopoly to allow the owner to
benefit from his work for a period of time. The creator can transfer this right
to others.
Copyright law came to disallow unauthorized copy of
protected materials, computer software is one of items that are covered under
copyright law, its easy for tangible items like book to be detected if copied,
however with computer devices and Internet it became more challenging to detect
a copy of software program or media file, in early days computer were so
expensive that software development cost were not mentioned, but by time,
computer software became complex and larger, it became noticed as isolated from
computer hardware.
Software copyright became protected in all countries,
however, not all countries enforce it, for example, when I was doing my under
graduate studies in Jordan, I bought my first PC, it’s hard disk were loaded
with copies of software binaries and installed software that I didn’t purchase,
it was the trend as incentive from the shop for buying this peace of hardware,
we never learned the importance of Intellectual property and never understood
its impact on the economy of our country and the whole world. Jordan started to
fight software piracy and its current copyright law, which was amended multiple
times in the recent years to cope with the development in this field, protects
software against piracy and issues fines and penalties against infringement, to
protect Jordanian developers, as well to maintain international relationship
with software exporters like the United States. (Al
Sharari, 2006)
Patent
Patent in general is given for any work that is
proved to be novel and non-obvious, by that the creator for this work is given
a monopoly for the production of the creation. This monopoly is governed to
encourage “the progress of science and Useful Arts” (Adams & McCrindle, 2008).
Patents unlike copyright are not approved under laws
in all countries; in the states they allow software to be patented however in
EU only lesser portion of software is patentable (Adams & McCrindle, 2008). The patent is given for a limited period of time,
which varies between countries and laws. During this period of time, no one
other than the person who has registered the patent is allowed to sell, import
or make the invention even if they prove that they came up with it by
themselves. However, an enhancement to the patent can be developed, but cannot
be sold or made without the right to use from the holder of the original
patent, and vise versa. Software patents were and still one of the areas that
is not approved and accepted by all countries.
The reason why software patents is not recognized in
the whole world relies in the fact that technology moves fast, and usually the
technology or the invention will be obsolete even before the patent period
finishes, which will not allow the society to benefit from the invention (Singh,
n.d.). However, software patent can be thought of as investment in the
development cycle of the idea or invention, without patent, invention will
attract people to copy it an register it under their name, non software patent
advocates argue that software patent serves big companies and harm small one’s,
but this is not true as Google started from small software patents and now one
of the multi-billion companies. (Duffy, 2006)
Trademark
Trademark is a logo, name, or phrase that used by
company to signifies and identify its products and services and show that they
are originated from the desired source, so they can be distinguished by this
logo.
Software companies can register their products or
their company name as a trademark, which prevents another company from having
the same name for its products. As other intellectual property aspects,
trademarks are infringed by the use of the internet, the most simple example
for that is having a domain name which can be pronounced like a well known
company to attract people, like the case for Mike Rowe who created a domain name
of www.mikerowsoft.com, (Tennant, 2005) especially with Microsoft either by
purpose or not, people use application names or part of it when they name their
applications, or maybe that’s the most thing we get exposed to in our region.
Software Trademark protects software product names
and software company names from being used, it protects the company’s image in
addition to software itself, trademark can be renewed, unlike patents. The
software trademarks protects the company’s reputation, for example, when the
companies or software trademarks is attached to software documentation, it
proves that this document is original, as well trademarks for certified people,
like VMware certification, shows that this person is certified and approved
expert in this field by the mother company, same for software distributers and
software company partners, who are differentiated by the Trademark of the
mother’s company in a specific product or list of products (Jacobs & Wynbrandt,
1997)
The protection for Trademark cannot happen only by
registering the software in the country of origin for the company, it should be
registered in multiple countries to be covered by the law in different regions.
Trademark law and trademark registration may differ between countries, for
example, In Qatar, not any business’s logo; name or sign can be registered as
trademark, alcoholic beverages are not allowed to
register under the Qatari Law. (AGIP, 2010).
References:
Adams, A.A. & McCrindle, R.J. (2008) Pandora’s box: Social and professional
issues of the information age. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons,
Ltd
AGIP, (2010), ‘Qatar, Trademark, FAQ’, [Online],
Available from: http://www.agip.com/country_service.aspx?country_key=60&service_key=T&SubService_Order=4&lang=en
(Accessed: 29 March 2011)
Brown, P. (2010), 'Trademark Hair Use
Online', Computer & Internet Lawyer, 27, 6, pp. 13-19, Computers &
Applied Sciences, [Online], Available from:
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.liv.ac.uk/ehost/detail?sid=bf1a9dde-a869-4e0c-8b80-af19985c82ac%40sessionmgr12&vid=1&hid=8&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=iih&AN=50339600 (Accessed 29 March
2011)
Fenwick & West LLP, (n.d.),
‘International Legal Protection for Software: Introduction’,
[Online], Available from: http://www.softwareprotection.com/
(Accessed
29 March 2011)
Jacobs, J. & Wynbrandt, R. (1997), "Overview
of trademarks", Association Management, vol. 49, no. 10, pp. 110 [Online].
Available from:
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.liv.ac.uk/ehost/detail?sid=6f176a52-c335-46b0-aa0f-2e2602b77685%40sessionmgr11&vid=1&hid=13&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=s3h&AN=9711173665 (Accessed: 29 March 2011)
Naser, M. (2009), ‘Computer Software: Copyrights v.
Patents’, [Online], Available from:
(Accessed
29 March 2011)
Al
Sharari, S. (2006), ‘Intellectual Property Rights Legislation and Computer
Software Piracy in Jordan’, [Online], Available from:
(Accessed
29 March 2011)
Tennant, D 2005, 'Trademark
Arrogance', Computerworld, 39, 31, p. 16, Computers & Applied Sciences
, [Online], Available from: http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.liv.ac.uk/ehost/detail?sid=11e45e26-7c72-47eb-b820-50e96640bcf9%40sessionmgr15&vid=1&hid=8&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=iih&AN=17781581
(Accessed: 29 March 2011)
Singh,
G. (n.d.), ‘World Trade Organization, Intellectual Property Rights’, [Online],
Available from: http://www.slideshare.net/gurjeit/wto-ipr-report
(Accessed
29 March 2011)
Duffy,
J. (2006), ‘Software Patents: What Good Are They?’, [Online], Available from:
(Accessed
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