Business Law and Intellectual Property Business Law & Intellectual Property

Until a few years ago intellectual property rights within the context of business law was a well understood and rock steady area of practice. Intellectual property law can protect product and process inventions including patents, copyrights, and trade secrets. These laws also protect things like names and styles under which a business and its products are recognized in the marketplace including service and trademarks. Intellectual property laws are also designed to safeguard vital but non-technological information about businesses and their operations, such as customers, suppliers, plans, and finances (Chiappetta, 1997). With the advent of digital technology, allowing for the virtually free transfer of ideas and products in a matter of minutes, the protections found under intellectual property laws are called into question. At least a reinterpretation of what constitutes intellectual property and how to protect it is necessary.

An article produced under the auspices of Questel-Orbit, a member of the France Telecom Group, frames the issues precisely: "If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it" (Barlow, 1994)?

Formerly it was generally assumed that value was based on scarcity, as it is with regard to physical objects. Intellectual property law has been constructed

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search Service estimates that U.S. companies lose one dollar to inadequate protection of intellectual property rights for every three dollars of revenue gained from exported products (Opportunities and challenges..., 1996). In reference to the Questel-Orbit article, intellectual property law fails to cover many current situations. Unlike copies of intellectual property made using analog copiers, digital copies of intellectual property produce perfect copies without any loss of quality. The first generation and the 1000th generation copy of digital material are indistinguishable. Since each copy is a perfect copy, no quality-related limits inhibit pirates from making as many copies as they please, and recipients of these copies have no incentive to return to authorized sources to get another copy equal in quality to the original version (Schlacter, 1997). Unlike the business of selling and distributing physical copies of books, magazines, music cassettes or CDs, video cassettes or software, the costs of making one extra copy of intellectual property on-line are insignificant, as are the distribution costs associated with moving that copy to the end user over the Internet. Assuming no per-byte or other volume costs are imposed o
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Approximate Word count = 1489
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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