Intellectual property law is a legitimate concept that deals with legal property rights such as copyrights, industrial design rights, patents, trade secrets, trademarks and any other creations of the mind whether artistic or commercial and their related rights. Under this law, anybody who holds either of these rights is entitled to ownership of certain exclusive rights to his or her creative work such as music, piece of literature, ideas, symbols, discoveries, phrases and words, inventions and designs. Most intellectual property rights are usually designed to protect the economic wellbeing of the owner of the original work and to enable him or her develop ideas in a monopolistic situation (Levine, David & Michele, 2008).
Intellectual property law was developed to curb the problem of piracy. With the discovery and growth of the internet, there has been a continuous increase in cases of piracy whereby there is increase in use of unauthorized patented materials or reproduction of copyrighted materials without the owner’s consent. Piracy is theft and hence illegal. An organization that patents their products has monopoly rights in their production and exclusive rights to sell them. Any other company that purports to produce a similar product without the copyright owner’s approval do infringe the owner’s rights and this is a crime punishable by law through fines or a jail term. Intellectual property rights consist of a group of exclusive rights to an original producer of both artistic and commercial creations of the mind. Such a producer is covered by copyright laws. This law protects work which is as a result of creativity. These works may include paintings, music, books, movies, photographs and software. The law gives the holder of these rights power to control and regulate reproduction and edition of his work within a specified period of time (Richard, Raysman & Kenneth, A 1999).
There are other laws which are designed and used for commercial or industrial purposes known as industrial properties law. This law involves use of patent and trademarks. A patent right is given to someone for an invention of a new, non-existent useful product. This law gives a patent holder power to stop and control other in producing a similar product without consent from the inventor within a specified period of time. A trademark on the other hand is a distinguishing sign used by a certain company to distinguish its products from other competitors or rival companies. An industrial design right is a law designed to protect the model and appearance of an industrial product from being copied by a rival firm without the consent of the right holder. A trade secret right on the other hand protects the rights of the proprietor to keep secret of his or her knowledge of his business from public knowledge, disclosure and interference (Mark Helprin, 2007).
Piracy can be in the form of private copying or commercial copying. Private copying occurs where someone makes a copy of another person’s creation of the mind like a program which has copyrights and gives it out to few individuals or installing the program in may computers for others to use. This infringes the copyrights of the owner as anyone who wishes to use that property should get it directly from the owner. Commercial copying is the production and sale of pirated materials which has been copyrighted. This form of piracy is the worst form as it directly reduces the revenue of the copyright holder. Those who commit commercial piracy do sell the pirated materials at a cheaper price than the copyright owners and this in effect reduces their market forcing them to sell at a loss.
The inclusive rights provided by intellectual property rights grant the owners of these rights to enjoy monopoly profits. These high profits acts as incentives for more people to become intellectual property owners. The intellectual property can be sold or licensed under a condition known as technological diffusion. The owner of the intellectual property can prevent the property from being shared if he or she wishes (Padraig, Christine, 2002).
Piracy can be done on various different types of intellectual properties, especially those that can be downloaded from the internet. These may include software, music compact disks, pictures and videos. Of all these pirated materials software is the leading pirated copyrighted property in the internet. Any intellectual material that is easily turned into digital material and easy to put into the internet is also easier to be found and to pirate. Through the use of the internet it’s very possible and common for a text to be copied from one site to another on the World Wide Web without the author’s knowledge and permission. The copyright owners through their efforts to curb the infringement of their rights have responded by posting warning notices on the internet. Some countries laws concerning intellectual property rights are not strong enough to fight the vice. These countries allow servers that accept internet based copyright infringements with very little restrictions (Mark Helprin, 2007).
Pirates usually explore the internet in a hope that there will be new software free of charge to pirate. The internet is usually very wide and hence the law that protects piracy cannot be fully applied to safeguard every intellectual property in it. It is very hard to monitor the entire sites in the internet to determine illegal software. Sites keep increasing now and then and since the internet is worldwide, there is no universal law that can be applied to curd piracy. Each country has its unique laws and therefore what is considered illegal in one country may not be illegal to another country. This fact makes the fight against piracy in the internet a loosing battle. For this battle to be worn there is a need for a common law worldwide to fight piracy and a new technology whereby new software will be developed top curb the menace (Padraig, Christine, 2002).
Programmers and copyright owners have devised several means of fighting piracy. Programmers have devised a means in which for a program to be installed, serial number must be required. If the person installing the program does not know the serial number of that program the program cannot be installed. Other programs have been developed to run for a specified period of time upon which when the period expires the program seizes to run and hence becomes useless. That program requires to be activated by another program or be accessed by use of a serial number. Some programs contain their own internal clocks that make them useless after a while. They can also use the computer’s BIOS to be informing the software of the date and authorize the BIOS to inform it of a certain date upon which the program will shut down. Various software manufacturing companies like Microsoft develops programs that requires being loaded before the program can work again (Robert, S & Pham, 2007).
Piracy can also be minimized by using the Dongle. Some software cannot work without a special piece of hardware which must be inserted into the serial or parallel port of the computer for the software to function. This piece of hardware requires an expert to make it so that it can make the software function. This amount of expertise required is so high and hence pirates are not able to make them. Despite all these, the problem of internet piracy still persists. This is partly because even if the serial numbers or programs and Dongle are used to make a software piracy free, pirates have their own ways of getting the serial numbers and hence they can access the software for free. There are also developed programs that contain and reveal the serial numbers of other much different software. Pirate have also been able to develop cracks, which are programs that are made and installed into the computer which makes the soft ware not to collapse (Richard, Raysman.& Kenneth, A, 1999).
There has been an attempt by some western countries to curb and overcome the problem of intellectual rights infringement through the establishment of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The 2007 agreement between the European community, Switzerland and Japan agreed to negotiate an agreement that would enforce a law that would protect the infringement of intellectual property law. Consequently, other countries have joined the fight. The intellectual property rights holder industry in the United State and European Union have requested more powers to put into effect their intellectual property rights protection all over the world. They have gone a step further in their efforts to protecting their intellectual rights by organizing various forums to discuss and sensitize the entire world for the need to protecting intellectual property rights especially on the internet. This has been done through the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Advisory Committee on Enforcement and by the Intellectual Property Experts’ Group at the Asia Pacific Economic Coalition (Connell, Shaun.2007).
To supplement the efforts by these multinational groups other intellectual property enforcement groups have cropped up recently through free regional and bilateral trade accord by the United States and the European community alongside other close trading partners. Besides having these multinational intellectual property rights enforcement treaties, little has been achieved towards achieving the intended objectives since some of the countries are still reluctant to enforce these laws to their citizens. Anti- Counterfeit Trade Agreement has developed some measures that tries to address the issues that raises concerns about consumers’ privacy and civil liberties concerning inventions and access to information in the internet without piracy. Anti-counterfeit Trade Agreement goal is to create a more powerful law regarding intellectual property enforcement rights and close international collaboration which will involve sharing of information between each countries, intellectual property enforcement body (Padraig, Christine, 2002).
Anti-Counterfeits trade Agreement aim was to provide a modern international legal framework where countries on their own accord could join to increase international cooperation on sharing of information among the member country’s intellectual property law enforcing bodies. It was to develop strict measures and punishment against those who violate the intellectual property rights in commercial piracy. The agreement further sought to include the rapid developing economies such as Brazil, China and Russia so as to be able to develop strong and up to date legal framework that can effectively offer the judiciary and the private bodies enough powers to prosecute the pirates especially those that deals with internet piracy and optical disc piracy (Padraig, Christine, 2002).
Despite all these efforts the fight against piracy especially on the internet seems to have been lost. To reduce internet piracy to a manageable level, there is need to have special programs by the internet service providers that are capable of filtering crack programs used by pirates. It should also stop and disable those internet connections alleged to be participating in intellectual property infringement (Kinsella, Stephan.2001).
Reference
- Connell, Shaun. 2007, Intellectual Ownership.
- Kinsella, Stephan. 2001, Against Intellectual Property, Journal of Libertarian Studies, 1-53.
- Levine, David & Michele 2008, What is Intellectual Property?, World Intellectual Property Organization.
- Padraig, Christine 2002, The Economics of Intellectual Property: Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre, Oxford, United Kingdom.
- Richard, Raysman.& Kenneth, A 1999, Intellectual Property Licensing: Forms and Analysis, Law Journal Press.
- Robert, S & Pham 2007, Economic Effects of Intellectual Property Intensive Manufacturing in the United States.
- Mark Helprin 2007, A Great Idea Lives Forever. Shouldn’t Its Copyright? The New York Times.