Within the past decade, society has seen numerous advancements in technology with large-scale changes and improvements within the information technology field. The delay per innovation has also seen a significant reduction, with inventions being continuously churned out. However, with such enhancements comes a necessity to protect these ideas by applying intellectual property rights. This is particularly so with the horizon of a more technological age. Presently, intellectual property rights have already begun to develop in a way to cover abstract aspects such as intangible assets. The primary goal of this article is to explain the growing necessity of protecting your intellectual property in this technological era.
Why Protect your Intellectual Property?
With the advent of the Internet, there has been growing ease of access for digitally consumable information. Consequently, the idea that anybody can recreate information because it is easily accessible has grown in popularity. Numerous websites that harbour copyrighted information have begun to pop up, spurred by global lockdowns.
Recent Disputes over Digital IP Protection
As recent as 2019, The Guardian, a UK-based news service had claimed that a foreign journalist was responsible for copying parts of a Guardian article to use in her own newspaper segment.
Even several large companies such as North Face have found themselves to be on the receiving end of PR nightmares due to several incidents of internet scams. In an attempt to be at the top of search engine results, North Face had planned to replace various images on Wikipedia with images of their own. However, Wikipedia had discovered North Face’s plan and accused them of exploiting their platform for free advertisement.
Examples such as these emphasise the growing need to continuously protect your IP rights, especially in modern times.
Government-led Drives on Protecting IP
Formally legislated in 1998, the United States had passed an act that attempted to halt the illegitimate use of copyright-protected works found on the internet. The United States’ action in protecting these rights was viewed by many as a correct step towards protecting intellectual property rights and integrating legislation focused in a digital context.
Recently, there have been numerous instated legislation that has the primary function of protecting articles online and protecting the rights to access digital archives. Although intellectual property is typically discussed in terms of trademarks and copyrights, other forms of intellectual property rights such as database rights exist. For example, Open Data Commons is a UK-based group that has successfully implemented various database laws and legal tools that can assist in controlling the ability to access and utilise data sets. The group has also introduced plans to appropriately distinguish publicly available data from restricted data. This was done by categorising the data on their accessibility limits by third parties with permission from the relevant authors.
Conclusion
Doubtlessly, protecting your intellectual property is a matter of great importance. This is even more so if you believe that your work is susceptible to being plagiarised. If you believe that you may need help protecting your intellectual property, consider speaking to us at Partners Law Group.
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Cover photo from Photon Photos found on ShutterStock.
