Assignment 3: Intellectual Property Laws And Security Measures

Intellectual Property (IP) Policy Document

Table of Content

Contents

TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Intellectual Property (IP) Policy Document PAGEREF _Toc8882037 \h 1

Overview of IP Law PAGEREF _Toc8882038 \h 3

Policy PAGEREF _Toc8882039 \h 3

Standards and Guidelines PAGEREF _Toc8882040 \h 3

Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights related IP regulations PAGEREF _Toc8882041 \h 4

Ownership of Company’s Material PAGEREF _Toc8882042 \h 5

Develop intellectual property violation reporting procedures. PAGEREF _Toc8882043 \h 5

Develop intellectual property infringement ramifications. PAGEREF _Toc8882044 \h 6

Copyright PAGEREF _Toc8882045 \h 6

Patents PAGEREF _Toc8882046 \h 6

Trade Secret PAGEREF _Toc8882047 \h 7

Overview of IP Law

Intellectual Property (IP) Law deals with the legal rights to inventions and creative work of an organization or the institution. It controls the usage of new products, designs, publications, and the artistic works, such as scholarly articles or artistic paining. The purpose of IP law is to allow creative people to profit from their work, instead of using others’ work in an illegal way CITATION Leg19 \l 1033 \m Sou19 (LegalCareer, 2019; Cloud, 2019).

Policy

The company is committed to high level of ethical and legal standards in its production. Thus it is the main objective of the company to compete fairly in the respective industry, which includes respecting IP rights of competitors, business partners, customers, suppliers, original equipment manufacturing and other services of the organizations. Thus, this policy aims to ensure that no company’s agent, contractor, or employees should misuse or steal the IP rights maintained by others. Furthermore, the purpose of this policy is to comply with the laws regulating IP, ensure the competitive marketplace integrity in IP, and maintain the company’s reputation as fair competitor. This policy applies to directors, officers, agents, independent contractors, and all employees of the company. Also, the policy applies to joint ventures, partnerships, business units, and subsidiaries where the company exercises management control.

Standards and Guidelines

The company aims to protect its own Intellectual Property, including technology, processes, and information from infringement by others. This is crucial as absence of IP protection will cause availability of the production to others, who have not made similar investments. This would not only harm company’s reputation in the market, but also cause the loss of competitive advantage and unique service production to the customers.

Company’s intellectual property includes copyrighted work, trade dress, trademarks and service marks, patented inventions and processes, trade secret technology (software and systems), and confidential business related information. Thus, it is responsibility of all employees, supervisors, and managers of the company to protect the company’s intellectual property and maintain awareness regarding importance of the protection to the company’s assets.

Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights related IP regulations

There exist several types of IP law, such as copyright, patents, trademarks, and others. The copyrights protects the owners’ rights over their work and prevent others from reproducing any data without authorization over the data, such as print, music, movies, or performances. A patent is a legal right over the making, selling, and distribution of the production. However, trademark is a word, lettering, symbol, or design that present a company’s identification on the production, which not only distinguish the production of specific company but also prevents other company to reuse the product with their name CITATION Leg19 \l 1033 (LegalCareer, 2019).

The company does not only aim to protect its own intellectual property but also committed to respect the IP of others. Regulations regarding respecting IP, including copyrights, trade dress, trademarks and service marks, infringement of patents, trade secrets, and misappropriation of business information, is complex. Thus, an advice from the expert, such as company’s attorneys, can be helpful to prevent infringing conduct.

The chances of violation of IP regulation increase when the employees of the agents of the company are collecting data of competitors. Though it is not improper, unethical, or illegal to accumulate information regarding competitors, but using some specific personal data, trademarks, or service marks may lead to the violation of IP of other company. The management, employees, and agents of the company must be aware of the restrictions associated with the usage of competitor’s IP, and must only rely only on the data which is publically provided by the competitors, such as analysis of annual reports to evaluate their upcoming strategies and investments CITATION Ada18 \l 1033 (Uzialko, 2018). Also, the company must remain restricted to use others’ software, access to confidential manuals, re-usage of slogans of trademarks, and disclosing information regarding competitors. Thus, it is very crucial to get aware of the usage of secondary data regarding competitors without violation of the IP of that specific company. In this all process, when the things get confusing, the employees or the authorities may consult to the attorney and may ask regarding the protection to company’s IP, as well as competitors IP.

Ownership of Company’s Material

In order to prevent the violation of the IP regulations, the company needs to maintain its own material, such as proper licenses, copyright documentation, manuals, adoption of slogan or trademark, protection to confidentiality, and standards of disclosing information the third party such as customers CITATION KAR04 \l 1033 (RAMAN, 2004).

Develop intellectual property violation reporting procedures.

The report can be done in two cases; either someone violated the IP of the company, or the employees, agents, or management found to be indulged in violation of the IP of competitors or other companies. In both cases, following procedure can be following to report the IP violation;

A statement must be sent to the authorities including details regarding copyright, patents, or trademarks violation.

Description of work that has been infringed.

Details regarding location or specification of the material being infringed, such as screenshot of product, trademark, or evidence of using ideas or creative work of the company with having authorization of doing it.

The complete details of the claimer, including full name, email address, contact number, and home address, at which he/she can be contacted.

Evidence or statement as a proof that the attempter had no authority to conduct the act, such as re-using the confidential data or trademark of the company.

A statement of the claimer regarding accuracy of the information being discussed in the notice, and that the claimer is authorized person by the company to act on the behalf of owner in case of infringing issues.

Claimers’ signature with a scanned copy of authorization to act on the behalf of owner in case of infringing issues CITATION Sou19 \l 1033 \m Cli19(Cloud, 2019; Sandvick, 2019)

Develop intellectual property infringement ramifications.

Copyright

Installation of computer software without proper license.

Maintaining additional copies of the software without license.

Without permission, downloading confidential information from subscription database.

Patents

Adoption of symbol, name, or slogan of services or goods that is similar to the slogan, symbol, or name of other organization.

Using productions, devices, ideas, or features that belong to others.

Failing to act upon notice of violation to IP

Developing design or production that is confusing to the creative ideas of the other company.

Trade Secret

Disclosing any confidential information, received from third party, to others.

Disclosing company’s confidential data to third party

Stealing trade secret information of competitors without permission of the owners.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY \l 1033 Cloud, S., 2019. Procedure for Reporting Copyright and other Infringements for Rights Owners in the United States. SoundCloud.

LegalCareer, 2019. What is Intellectual Property Law?. Legal Career Path.

RAMAN, K., 2004. PROTECTING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS THROUGH INFORMATION POLICY. Ubiquity.

Sandvick, C. M., 2019. How to Report International Intellectual Property Violations.

Uzialko, A. C., 2018. Copyright Infringement: Are You Stealing Intellectual Property?. Business News Daily.