Free «Intellectual Property » Essay

As mentioned by Ginsburg (1), intellectual property (IP) is the creation of exclusive rights within individual’s mind which is adversely recognized by law.She notes that based on intellectual property law, certain prohibition and copyright laws have incorporated both intangible access such as artistic work and discoveries. This is to ensure that owners of certain assets and inventions are provided wit exclusive rights over their property. However, the ‘borderless nature” of the world today has created many challenges for intellectual property. This write up discusses some of these challenges and how to respond to them.

According to Ginsburg, the openness and borderless nature of the internet has posed new and complex challenges to the creators of intellectual property. She points out that it has resulted into emergence of new online players and upgraded business model that have breached the protection and ownership interest being enjoyed by lawful copyright owners. Negroponte notes that the availability of borderless internet to people with computer and telephone technologies in today’s world has not only increased the mode of communication, but it has also resulted into the breaching of cyberspace legal laws.

While countries such as India have incorporated all cyber laws in providing legal infrastructure for internet use, such laws do not deal with issues of jurisdiction, protection of domain name, and more so, infringement of basic copyright laws.Nicholas notes that this disproportional growth ration between internet use and cyber law has made it difficult to provide electronic evidence against cyber crimes.

For instance, Thierer describes jurisdiction as the ability of the court to hear and resolve dispute.However, the borderless nature of today’s internet makes it more complicated in maintaining any cyberspace suit filed. According to him, the borderless nature of the world today has posed loopholes in legal framework of information technology thereby falling short of international standards.This is due to the fact that any jurisdiction offered by court on respective intellectual property laws can only serve within a given physical, geographical, and political boundaries. It therefore allows individual across nations to illegally impair and engage in activities that breach the contract law, copyright law or even criminal law thereby barring the creator of intellectual property from fully enjoying interest from the property.

Ubertazzi notes that the unique nature of internet through virtual space has made it difficult for policy makers to come up with measures aiming at to regulating the borderless space in order to resolve regulation disputes.He observes that internet is not confined by any physical or political boundaries. It therefore fit the borderless nature of today’s world thereby making it difficult to apply existing sovereign entity and restriction laws in resolving issues relating to intellectual property.

As Henry observes, the borderless nature of the world has persuaded organizations to move into e-commerce or e-commerce companies without being aware of the surrounding business patenting methods.He notes that this has made them not to vitality capture the value of their intellectual property. This is evident through considerable growth in patenting offshore business methods as engaged by various companies and related e-commerce systems. Henry explains that related e-commerce patenting businesses have resulted into various controversies including breaching of trade mark laws. The opponents of the concept of patenting points out these methods as not being able to meet the major threshold criteria of patenting and trademark laws which include being inventiveness and providing obvious opportunities to expert in the filed through legalized authentication.

Additionally, Henry points out that the virtual space of today’ world has granted patents in conferring to monopolistic business methods such as making secure credit cards for internet payments.This extensive use of digital technology in e-commerce, as he observes, has raised concerns on the validity of sites which are currently using such methods for transaction. This has affected the intellectual property of various patent businesses especially when such business use trademarks of other organizations. For instance, the emergence of patent and trademark fight between Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.Amazon.com which use one click methodology for online purchasing of products has seen the latter being sued in court for infringing on the intellectual property rights of the former (Amazon.com).This has not only affected Barnes & Noble, but it has hindered its customers in purchasing books via one click methodology

However, ensuring the maintenance on awareness of the values and negative consequences of e-commerce, as Henry observes, would adequately help in addressing problems associated with engaging patent business methods in today’s virtual world. This would involve seeking expert legal advice before an individual or organization venture into e-commerce.

On the other hand, the borderless nature of today’s world has led to increased globalization of business which has also affected the indispensability of international intellectual property protection rules. Nakagawa notes that most of developed countries have exploited the borderless nature of today’s world and developed intellectual property rights system that benefits them from globalization.They have used such strategies in creating conducive environment for foreign investment and technological transfer which have not considered the intellectual property rights of local innovators.

While Roy admits that the borderless nature of the world today’s has been redefined by emergence of internet and e-commerce, he alludes how this has impacted on the intellectual property of developing countries like in South Pacific region.He notes that the virtual space of today’s world has made laws which were made to ensure sovereignty of states through geographical border and jurisdictional limitations to become increasingly meaningless. Money laundering has become a common practice in South Pacific region where sophisticated encryption methodologies are being deployed towards these developing countries by criminals from developed world thereby infringing on the political and economic rights of local people.

As Morell critic, the free culture movement created by the borderless nature of today’s world has created intellectual monopolies which have affected the progress and benefits associated with intellectual property.He notes that by freely allowing exchange of information and products, intellectual property has been highlighted as only benefiting the interest of certain people in the expense of the general population. According to him, it is the continuous expansion of copyright rules and business model which have created intellectual monopolies which continuous to harm the public interests. This is due to the fact that intellectual property, as expounded in catering for unrestricted boundaries of today’s world, tends to concentrate more on economic goals thereby leaving out essential social conformity. Therefore, the failure by intellectual property system to address the social product would result into infringing on individual’s right to scientific benefits and cultural participation.

In resolving the complexity of dealing with internet related challenges such as jurisdiction and protecting domain name, Negroponte believes that redefining cyber laws as per international standards would be appropriate.He notes that providing a uniform universal law would ensure that the violation and infringement of intellectual property across borders are effectively resolved. Additionally, Nakagawa points out that international harmonization of systems would resolve the international intellectual property conflict as it will hinder overreliance of private commercialization arbitration.Moreover, ensuring that law enforcement agencies have legal capacity to collaborate, and coordinate with international investigators would help ensure that the sovereignty of the intellectual property of developing countries are not breached.

In conclusion, the borderless nature of today’s world has increased the mode at which communication and technology is transferred via internet. This is what has resulted into infringing of intellectual property rights which have become impossible to resolve through the existing legal framework. It is thus imperative to develop and harmonize universal standardized international jurisdiction law that would help in resolving the violation and infringement of IP right across boundaries.