Economic & Legal Aspects of Intellectual Property need proper attention

Economic & Legal Aspects of Intellectual Property

needs Proper Attention

 

Very often very creative minds don’t get due share of their work. The major reason is unauthorized use of the creation and creativity by beneficiaries of the creation.

It is important for any creation to be protected under the law so that inventor must have incentive to use his or her creativity for the benefit of the society and for his or her personal benefit as well within the provisions of overall legal system prevalent in the society. While extending legal protection it is important to understand the scope of the intellectual property within the overall legal framework and economic implications of the objective of the subject under consideration.

Scope of intellectual property rights

Like every other property intellectual property should also have ownership and right to use.

Intellectual property may be analyzed in terms of its subject matter, the actions it regulates in respect of the subject matter, the duration of particular rights, and the limitations on these rights. Intellectual property law is conventionally categorized according to subject matter: inventions, artistic expression, secrets, semiconductor designs, and so on. Intellectual property law regulates what people may legally do with these inventions, expressions and so on. The regulations regarding each subject matter area tend to form distinct bodies of law; the rules permitting reproduction without license of patented inventions and copyrighted expression are entirely independent of one another.

Legal aspects of Intellectual Property

Like any other property right to use should be well defined. Owners of IPR should have write to decide how will use and under what terms and conditions. Intellectual property rights are generally divided into two categories: those that grant exclusive rights only on copying/reproduction of the item or act protected (e.g. copyright or copyleft) and those that grant not only this but also other exclusive rights. The difference between these is that a copyright would prevent someone from copying the design of something, but could not stop them from making that design if they had no knowledge of the original held by the copyright holder. A patent, on the other hand, can be used to prevent that second person from making the same design even if they had never heard of or seen the original. Patent rights can thus be more powerful, and generally harder to obtain and more expensive to enforce.

There are also more specialized varieties of so-called sui generis intellectual property rights, such as circuit design rights, plant breeder rights, plant variety rights, industrial design rights, supplementary protection certificates for pharmaceutical products and database rights.

IP law will regulate others from unauthorized use

Generally, the action regulated by intellectual property law is unauthorized reproduction. However, as indicated above, some rights go beyond this to grant a full suite of exclusive rights on a particular idea or product. One can say that intellectual property rights grant the holder the ability to stop others doing something (i.e., a negative right), but not necessarily a right to do it by themselves (i.e., a positive right). For example, the holders of a patent on a new ingredient may be able to prevent others selling it, but in most countries cannot sell it themselves without a separate permission or authorization from a food regulatory authority under food laws.

IP laws permits rightholders to sue the infringer

In must of the cases, intellectual property rights are nothing more than the right to sue an infringer, it means that the interested people will approach the right holder for permission to perform the acts covered by the rightholder’s exclusive rights. The granting of this permission is termed licensing, and Intellectual property licenses may be used to impose conditions on the licensee, generally the payment of a fee or an undertaking not to engage in particular forms of conduct. In many jurisdictions the law places limits on what restrictions the licensor (the person granting the licence) can impose. In the European Union, for example, competition law has a strong influence on how licences are granted by large companies.

IP laws permits rightholders to issue a permission / licence

A license is ‘permission’ to do something, in contract form. Therefore a license is only required for activities which fall under the exclusive rights in question. The intellectual property laws of certain countries provides for certain activities which do not require any license, such as reproduction of small amounts of texts, sometimes termed fair use. Many countries’ legal systems afford compulsory licenses for particular activities, especially in the area of patent law.

Economic aspects of Intellectual Property must be communicated in colleages and school to develop intellectual capital at young age

A government for a limited period of time awards many intellectual property rights. Such rights are justified as a reward for creating intellectual works. Economic theory typically suggests that a free market with no intellectual property rights will lead to too little production of intellectual works relative to an efficient outcome. Thus by increasing rewards for authors, inventors and other producers of intellectual capital, overall efficiency might be improved. On the other hand, intellectual property law could in some circumstances lead to increased transaction costs that outweigh these gains. Another consideration is that restricting the free reuse of information and ideas will also have costs, where the use of the best available technique for a given task or the creation of a new derived work is prevented.

IP laws offer exclusive rights to sell or use or licence but avoid patents extension on flimsy grounds to prevent competition

Intellectual property rights such as copyrights and patents give the holder an exclusive right to sell, or license, the right to use that work. As such, the holder is the only seller in the market for that particular item of intellectual property, and the holder is often described as having a monopoly for this reason.

However, it may be the case that there are other items of intellectual property that are close substitutes. For example, the holder of publishing rights for a book may be competing with various other authors to get a book published. For this reason, many writers prefer that intellectual property rights be described as exclusive rights rather than monopoly rights.

IP laws must offer right to claim damages at low cost to help small innovators against big corporations

If the market for the rights to some intellectual property is perfectly competitive, then the rights to that intellectual property will generally be worthless. This is because in a perfectly competitive market, sellers are price takers and can sell to as many people as they like at the prevailing price in the market. It costs little or nothing to grant someone the right to use a copyrighted work or patent, so the optimal behaviour for the seller is to sell as many licenses as possible, whatever the price is, forcing the price towards zero. Thus intellectual property rights, to be valuable, must give the holder some market power (the ability to influence price) in the market for rights to use that intellectual property. An example may be a patent covering an idea where another idea, which is in the public domain, provides the same utility and no one is likely to accidentally stumble on and use the patented idea. If someone were to re-invent the patented idea and use it unaware a patent exists, the patent holder can claim damages.

IP Law must encourage financial incentive to the innovator

The case for intellectual property in economic theory is substantially different than the case for tangible property. Consumption of tangible property is rivalrous. For example, if one person eats an apple, no other person can eat it; if one person uses a plot of land to build a home, that plot is unavailable for use by others. Without the right to exclude others from tangible resources, a tragedy of the commons can result. Intellectual property does not share this feature. For example, an indefinite number of copies can be made of a copyrighted book without interfering with the use of the book by owners of other copies. Therefore, the rationale for intellectual property rests on the incentive effects. A more elaborated view of capital suggests that the three most common property instruments applied provide exclusive rights to use different things: copyright covers creative works and expressions of ideas, patent covers ideas with industrial application and trademark covers means to uniquely identify a producer or other source of reputation. Without intellectual property rights (or subsidies), there would be no direct financial incentive to create new inventions or works of authorship.

Challenges to Protect Intellectual Property

Technological Challenge to Intellectual Property

Technological advances constantly destabilize intellectual property rights. Today’s’ great advances in computing, telecommunication, biotechnology, biological sciences, and so on require very considerable investment indeed in order to be made, but very often taken over by others quickly, efficiently and cheaply. This makes the case for some IP protection very hard to resist. This also explains why corporate are demanding more and more protect for new form of intellectual property like database compilations, multi-media works, new form of electronic distribution, DNA manipulation, genetic engineering, etc.

Political Challenge to Intellectual Property

On one hand the demand for increased protection has arisen at the same time level of suspicion and criticism of intellectual property protection. The demand for foreign investment and new products by consumers are forcing intellectual property regime in developing economies.

At the same time based on the ideology and need for freer access to technical and educational materials, for self sufficiency and independent initiatives for national business concerns governments are curbing the growth of monopolies through Anti-trust laws, Competition policy, Compulsory Licence requirements, curbs on royalties payments, licences to operate or ownership rights, etc.

 

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