Running head: INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 1

Innovations of Copyright and Intellectual Properties

Phoebe Spence Wilson

INF/103

August 12, 2013

Edwyne Duffie

INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 2

Innovations of Copyright and Intellectual PropertiesEven though it is our own beloved Constitution that clearly states “The Congress shall

have Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited

Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and

Discoveries . . . ,” our nation has continued to be divided almost equally for many years (Gilbert,

2011, para.1). It was because of this constitutional authority that in 1790, Congress passed the

first United States Patent and Copyright Acts. With all due respect, it has been 223 years since

this was written. I am not so sure that our forefathers, as ahead of their time as they only may

have been, could have foreseen where our technology has taken us or the great lengths that we

could be headed to (Gilbert, 2011). Perhaps where we should focus our innovations next is on

our country itself. There are basically three types of economic protection for invention and

creative expression, which are copyright, patents, and trademarks.

Copyrightable works can be anything from literature, music, and motion pictures to

choreographed dance numbers, playwrights, and architecture (Copyright Basics, 2012). Patents

are issued for inventive works and trademarks are used for different branding, which could be

four different kinds of marks.

The two primary types of marks that can be registered with the USPTO are:

Trademarks - used by their owners to identify goods, that is, physical commodities,

which may be natural, manufactured, or produced, and which are sold or otherwise

transported or distributed via interstate commerce.

Service marks - used by their owners to identify services, that is, intangible activities,

which are performed by one person for the benefit of a person or persons other than

himself, either for pay or otherwise (Trademarks, 2012, para.3)

Application Steps

INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 3

There are three simple steps for copyrights. Of course, you must make sure the name of

your product has not already been taken, register your product online by giving your information

to the U.S. copyright office, and pay a 35 dollar registration fee to have your copyright approved

within a reasonable amount of time, at approximately just the couple months needed for

processing (Copyright Basics, 2012). Patents seem to be a little more difficult than getting your

work copyrighted. They can actually deny your application more often than accept it and it is

very much recommended that an attorney files it for you, whereas with a copyright a lawyer is

unnecessary (Patent Process, 2012). Trademark registration is almost the same as the patent

application, except it takes much longer. The same United States Patent and Trademark Office

receives your application and after 3 to 4 months will contact you for review or corrections and

then another 6 months until a decision is made (Trademarks, 2012).

Application Statistics

The United States Copyright Office within the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.,

receives approximately 600,000 copyright applications a year. There wouldn’t be any pending

applications for copyright simply because a copyright is an automatic right. If you apply for a

copyright, you are automatically approved, as long as the work is in fact original (Copyright

Basics, 2012). In 2012, there were 576,763 patent applications submitted to the U.S. Patent and

Trademark Office (Patent Process, 2012). The 1.2 million plus of patent pending applications

shown here include patents that are still pending from previous years. To file for a trademark is

the most expensive at anywhere from $275 to $375 per item. If the trademark is intended to be

used in commerce there are additional fees on a per case basis. A portion of all of these fees are

non-refundable for processing. Some total registration fees are non-refundable even if your

patent or trademark does not get approved (Trademarks, 2012).

INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 4

Restrictive Technologies

Copyright infringement. These restrictive technologies although seemingly new, have

been developing since the 1950s. We have been at this for years. In the 1950s and 1960s,

publishers battled the Xerox 914 photocopier and many other manufacturers creating the

copyright infringement ‘crime’, the music industry in the 1970s fought the use of blank cassette

tapes claiming ‘hometaping is killing the music industry’ (Griffin, 2012). According to Griffin,

only ten percent of sound recordings that were prior to World War II have been released from

private hands for public access, the percentage drops to nearly zero for anything released before

1920, and from 1890 to 1964, only 14 percent of recordings have been released for public access

(2012). Even libraries and sound preservation boards are even having a near impossible time

attempting to move around these copyright laws just for the sake of preserving our cultural

history. “…cultural history is adversely affected by the terms of protection provided sound

recordings under current copyright law” (Griffin, 2012, para.18). Websites, online cloud storage,

desktop cloud storage programs, digital forums, peer-to-peer software, and many physical

internet distributors

. . . help content creators by allowing them to make, promote, and distribute their works

to audiences more easily, and offering them several new options to reaching the

marketplace without selling their copyrights to the traditional dominant distributors like

publishers, record labels, or movie studios. An artist may still opt to partner with an

incumbent intermediary, but these new services give the artist a choice and offer most

efficient ways for content owners of all kind to distribute works (Griffin, 2012, para.18).

There is also the Creative Commons Organization, where individuals with all, some, or no

copyrights reserved may showcase their creative works or simply provide it for the public for

INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 5

free just to be able to get their name out (Bowles, 2010).

Piracy Laws. Now more recently, Peer-to-Peer, otherwise known as P2P, file sharing

technology has been labeled as illegal and we now have piracy laws to adhere to, preventing

unauthorized and illegal downloading. The P2P networking should be nothing more than a new

technology that could be paving the way for our future in technological innovations (Griffin,

2012). There are many positive, functional, and even educational ways to use P2P sharing. For

example, a university staff or student body could utilize for the distribution of electronic

textbooks. This technology will not be recognized if Digital Rights Management, also known as

DRM, stifles our potential.

Digital rights management. DRM is exactly what it says by its name, management of

our rights to digital media. This can be media that simply has just been created and released or

media that we have already purchased. Some companies do not even let you read some of their

books you purchase through their store on any other devices. Kindle for example, you can only

use on other Amazon devices. Thanks only to the invention of cloud storage are we now even

able to use multiple devices. When kindle first came out a second purchase of the eBook was

necessary.

DRM gives media and technology companies the ultimate control over every aspect of

what people can do with their media: where they can use it, on what devices, using what

apps, for how long, and any other conditions the retailer wants to set. Digital media has

many advantages over traditional analog media, but DRM attempts to make every

possible use of digital goods something that must be granted permission for (Defective by

Design, para.5)

INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 6

Mobile technology integrations. It might be understandable to have these restrictive

technologies in place if they were created with other technologies and devices in mind, but

publishers of textbooks are so quick to place restriction that the software companies and mobile

technology cannot keep up. For example, there are students at University of Phoenix that cannot

download the eBooks that they paid for to their tablets because the latest Adobe Reader program

does not have the correct software for tablets built yet that supports DRM integration. They must

read on their laptops or print the whole book out. Granted a student has in fact found a way to

print to a file as a different format after signing into their DRM school profile and transfer to

their tablet that way, but that just shows that even with whatever restriction is set upon us, people

will always find a way if it is not convenient or they simply do not agree with the regulated use.

In conclusion, only big industry and global business are benefiting from the intellectual

property restrictions. Our first thought is probably that this might be helping our economy, but

considering most mid- to lower-level management and below is mostly outsourced to different

countries in many top companies, it is definitely not creating U.S. jobs. Also, if these companies

are feeding the economy, why are we still in so much debt? What this quote is saying from the

World Intellectual Property Organization is the GLOBAL economy is being helped, not the

United States economy and it would be nice if we could worry about ourselves for a change.

WIPO Director General Francis Gurry said “A press conference in Geneva provided us very little

reassurance of individual or small business gain and focused mainly on international big

business. As in previous years, demand for WIPO’s international IP filing systems increased

despite a weak economic climate…As we begin to see signs of a recovery, those companies that

built strong portfolios of intangible assets during the downturn will benefit the most from new

market opportunities” (2013, para.1).

INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 7

Then there is an astonishing quote that has delightfully come from the United States

Copyright office themselves: “We [also] live in an age of great technological innovation. This

not only affects the ways in which authors may disseminate creative works and consumers may

enjoy them—it affects the very means by which works are created and knowledge is accessed.

And it calls for a robust legal framework for the 21st century—a framework by which authors

are respected, investments (both intellectual and financial) are encouraged, enforcement

measures are responsive, and limitations and exceptions are meaningful” (2012, para.3). Perhaps

the reinvention of our thoughts and ideas has somehow provoked some to realize we are not

living in the time the constitution was written anymore. Times they have changed.

References

INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 8

Bowles, M.D. (2010). Introduction to Computer Literacy. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint

Education, Inc.

Defective by Design. (2012). What is DRM? Retrieved from

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm_digital_restrictions_management

Gilbert, R. (2011, June). A World without Intellectual Property? A Review of Michele Boldrin

and David Levine's Against Intellectual Monopoly. Journal of Economic Literature,

49(2), 421-432. Retrieved from EBSCOhost EconLit Database.

Griffin, Jodie. (2012, October). The Economic Impact of Copyright: A presentation to TPP

negotiators. Public Knowledge. Retrieved from http:// publicknowledge.org/economic-

impact-copyright-presentation-tpp-negotia

McDermott, A. J. (2012, March). Copyright: Regulation Out of Line with Our Digital Reality?

Information Technology & Libraries, 31(1), 7-20. Retrieved from EBSCOhost Academic

Search Premier Database.

Trademarks. (2012, May). The United States Patent and Trademark Office. Retrieved from

http://www.uspto.gov/inventors/trademarks.jsp

U.S. Copyright Office. (2012). Copyright Office Celebrates World Intellectual Property Day

2012. Retrieved from http://www.copyright.gov/docs/wipo2012.html

Walker, M. (2009). Economists say copyright and patent laws are killing innovation; hurting

economy. Newsroom. Retrieved from http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/13656.aspx

WIPO Press Conference in Geneva. (2013, March). Strong Growth in Demand for Intellectual

Property Rights in 2012. World Intellectual Property Organization. Retrieved from

http://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2013/article_0006.html

Image 1: http:// upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/US-CopyrightOffice

INNOVATIONS OF COPYRIGHT AND IPs 9

-Seal.svg/480px-US-CopyrightOffice-Seal.svg.png

Image 2: http:// upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/US

-PatentTrademarkOffice-Seal.svg/480px-US-PatentTrademarkOffice-Seal.svg.png

Image 3: http:// pravum.kg/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/wipo.png