Guide to Intellectual Property by The Economist

Author:The Economist
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs

Copyright

Copyright is virtually costless (with the exception of any purchase price) until enforcement is required. The difficulty is that copyright provides limited protection to technology.

Copyright is probably the lowest-cost form of IP protection. In most countries the right arises automatically on authorship of a work and there is no need to register copyrights. However, there may be local advantages to registering or recording ownership and advice should be obtained if a particular country is of interest. In the US, registration is required for enforcement for works by US authors and for any copyright owner to be entitled to certain enhanced remedies. It is also helpful in establishing title to a copyright work. Registration is a comparatively simple process and much guidance is available online from the US Copyright Office.

Enforcement

Copyright law is surprisingly complicated given the simplicity of the basic concept. Where copying is not slavish, proving infringement of protected copyright expression may be more complex (and thus often more expensive) than trademark litigation. However, copyright litigation is generally less expensive than patent litigation. A major difficulty with enforcement of copyright is the ease of copying and distributing digital content, including over the internet, as well as the protections given to internet service providers (see Chapter 7). A copyright owner must adopt business strategies that reduce incentives for copying and take advantage of the range of governmental, law-enforcement and civil remedies available. As with trademarks, a strategy is likely to be based first on stopping copying, which is the most competitively harmful.

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