New year, new semester.... One of the courses I'm taking during the IMKE spring semester is the Intellectual Property and New Media course given by Kaido Kikkas. This is a very interesting subject because intellectual property (IP) is something intangible but is one of the key factors in economic and technological development. It can be a blessing for private companies but a curse for consumers and the whole industry. In todays digital age the laws that regulate the use and rights of IP sometimes defy common sense and seem downright stupid. An example of such a case was pointed out by Kaido in our first lecture: http://webshop.ffii.org/
An interesting subject indeed...
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2 comments:
Yeah, interesting topic indeed. This is one of those that you really should sit down and discuss to get to the bottom of. There's so much mis-information about IP and patents and all that around there.
That IFFI webshop is a perfect example. Having researched this a bit further (I'm actually fortunate enough to share a home with a patent attorney with over 20 years experience!) I've come to the conclusion that that example is greatly exaggerated. But the big problem is, it all depends on the individual attorney. Not all are ethical and knowledgable enough to process software patents and laws can be bent alot.
But yeah, a loooong topic. :)
I agree 100% that the example is exaggerated. In fact that's part of the problem core - lawyers get paid to exaggerate and without any boundries this could potentially lead to absurd situations like the given example.
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