Property Rights: Intellectual Property

Intellectual property sometimes considered as intangible property owned by individual or organization. But now, the information technology has made it difficult to protect this kind of property because any information that has been computerized is easily being distributed on network. The digital media is different from physical media which make the data becomes easy to be duplicate and easy to be transmitted. Challenges to intellectual properties such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which makes it illegal to circumvent technology based-protections of copyrighted materials. There are some kinds of protections that are usually being used to protect the intellectual property which are trademark, trade secrets, copy rights, and patent law.

Trademark : it is a word, symbol, design or phrase that differentiates each good to another good, for example the Nike “swoosh” design identifies the shoes make by Nike. To make a such design, first we need to ensure that the same design had never exist.

Trade secrets : any intellectual information used for business purposes are recognized as trade secret as long as it is not based on public domain. The examples of trade secrets are soda formulas, costumer list, and survey result. Trade secret protections last only as long as we take the necessary steps to control the disclosure and use of the information.

 Copyrights : it is the law that protects the owner of the intellectual property for  having their work being copied by any other individuals or organizations during the  owner’s life time plus additional years after his death.

Patents : it gives an exclusive monopoly on the ideas behinds invention which makes the inventor of some new devices or methods to have a full payment and receive some rewards for their work inventing the new invention. It is also allowed the owners not to share the full information about their invention for those individuals or organizations who are willing to use the idea under the license of the patent’s owner.