Protecting Intellectual Property Rights In Software Essay

Protecting Intellectual Property Rights In Software - Essay Example In addition, the rules which come under ‘intellectual property right’ offer various techniques for saving these rights of possession depending on their category. However, there are fundamentally 4 kinds of intellectual property rights which are applied to software, copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets. Additionally, each type offers a specific legal defense. For instance, copyrights, patents and trade secrets are utilized to protect the technology itself. Moreover, trademarks do not protect technology; however they are used to protect symbols or names used to differentiate a product in the market (Freibrun, 2011; ZINNOV LLC, 2001; Locklizard, 2011). This paper outlines some of the important ways to protect intellectual property in software industry. This paper will discuss intellectual property rights which are used for software such as copyright, patent and trademark. Copyright Software copyright is a rule or regulation that affects anybody who makes use of a computer, and especially the companies; it is not rare for a company to face civil or yet illegal proceedings for software copyright violation. On the other hand, it is a difficult part of law that is not extensively recognized (Kerr, 2007; InnovAccess, 2009. In addition, software copyright is not fundamentally dissimilar from some other kinds of copyright. Though, there are specific scenario of copyright law that is explicit to software, for the reason that there are realistic dissimilarities among software as well as other aspects that can be copyrighted (poems, books, sculptures, drawings, etc.). Additionally, the copyright law offers a programmer (or in the scenario of a working programmer, that programmer's company) an extensive degree of power over the system/application/program that he or she develops. For instance, the proprietor of copyright in a part of computer software that has the right to stop others from making copies of the software, or some considerable fraction of the software, whether the copy right infringer creates the copy by pasting application on hard disk, floppy disk, CD ROM, or by printing out a hard copy of the code of the software (Kerr, 2007; InnovAccess, 2009). When somebody develops a unique piece of application/code/software, that individual then apply something known as copyright to that application. In addition, applying the copyright to application or software outlines that owner of that particular application has the security of the law thus nobody can attempt to take their software. Additionally, under copyright law, people are not allowed to: (Copley, 2011) Make a copy the application or software intended for other people Loan the software to some other individuals Offer the software on rent to other people Making an illegal installation of application on a network when other people are able to make use of its or access it Moreover, if somebody does not comply with the law or regulation of copyright, they could be pena lized with fines or even through imprisonment. The cause for this is that making software engages work of a lot of people and might take thousands of hours. It is simply fair that all this effort is protected (Copley, 2011). In this scenario, the US Copyright Office recognizes the software to be â€Å"a group of declarations or commands to be employed openly or not directly in a system to carry about a specific output.† However, copyright security is not implemented to thoughts, ideas, program logic, algorithms, techniques or layouts (ClickandCopyright, 2011). In addition, in software copyrights scenario the