Intellectual property rights (IPRs) can both inspire and inhibit innovation. IPRs are meant to inspire innovation by protecting creators' works and inventions, providing incentives and market opportunities. However, IPRs can also inhibit innovation. Overly broad or long-lasting protections allow rights holders to restrict access and control future innovation, increasing costs. New digital technologies also challenge existing IPR frameworks by making unlimited copying and distribution easier. Striking the right balance between protection and open access is an ongoing challenge around promoting innovation.

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)
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9. trademarks

10. industrial designs
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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