Hello and welcome to another lecture of Innovation Management when we talk about intellectual
property issues.
Whenever innovation is involved, we will always have to talk about how to protect innovation
or why intellectual property protection exists at all.
So let's get started with that.
Today we are going to look into various means and mechanisms to actually protect intellectual
property.
And I will explain in a second why I don't like the term intellectual property especially,
but I am nonetheless going to use it.
And it's a bit old already, but it's still a really relevant and really good one.
So I would like to integrate and include a video by John Oliver of Last Week Tonight
on patent trolls.
So let's get started with intellectual property rights.
I'm going to use this term throughout this lecture, but I don't, I'm not really fond
of it.
And I will tell you in a second why I don't like it very much.
But let's get started by thinking about what is the purpose of having a system which basically
provides intellectual property protection?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of having intellectual property protection?
This would be good opportunity for discussing that in a group, but given the lack of opportunity
for interaction now, just think hard about it.
What might be advantages and disadvantages of having intellectual property protection?
Well, for one thing, if you ask Microsoft, they will claim for sure if we cannot protect
our intellectual property, then we, there will be no incentive for us to innovate because
everybody can copy what we have come up with.
Then why should we have an incentive to actually come up with things in the first time?
So intellectual property protection gives incentives to an inventor to actually innovate.
It gives the innovator an incentive, an opportunity to monetize the innovation that they have
brought to the market.
That's one advantage for sure.
It provides incentives to innovate.
Also, if you think not every inventor might also be able to actually exploit the innovation.
Think you're a great individual engineer, you can come up with a great idea to kind
of revolutionize space travel, well, you need deep pockets when you want to experiment and
double with space travel.
So if you can sell your idea, your patent, or whatsoever what you have, or license it
off, that will kind of provide a market for technology.
So you can distinguish the inventor and kind of the exploiter of the invention by having
a market for technology that can exist in the form of licenses, et cetera, et cetera.
This is an advantage for sure.
So let's think about what might be disadvantages to intellectual property protection.
Well, one thing for sure, having a protection limits the diffusion of the innovation because
by definition it protects it so it will diffuse slower and less far than as if there were
no innovation at all.
Sometimes we see that when countries like India or China willfully infringe and ignore
protection mechanisms to make use of drugs that are helpful and necessary in the countries
where they don't have the money to kind of pay for the licenses, et cetera.
So protection mechanisms will by definition limit the diffusion that is being done, that
can happen.
And also it will limit derivatives of the innovation with all we know and we have seen
that innovations often build upon other innovations.
And you might remember the definition, the very definition of innovation, kind of the
recombination of existing building blocks to form, to create something new that has
never been done before, the Schumpeter definition.
Well, if we protect innovations, well, others cannot build upon that, cannot step on our
shoulders basically and go a little further.
We have seen that in the past when James Watt patented an improvement to the steam engine
and Hornblower came up with even a better idea, he could not bring that to the market.
Of course, James Watt had protected and kind of sued Hornblower, so he couldn't bring
out his improvement, which was actually better than James Watt's to the market.
So James Watt kind of prevented the progress of the evolution on the steam engine for quite
a couple of years.
That is a disadvantage for sure.
So the advantages incentives to innovate and providing markets for technology, the disadvantage,
it limits diffusion and adoption, and it limits derived innovations derivatives.
Let us think about why these intellectual property protections exist in the law in the
first place.
It's quite clearly spelled out in the US Constitution, so that's why I would like
to cite the US Constitution at this point in time.
And it says, Congress shall have the power to promote the progress of science and useful
arts by securing for time limited to authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their
respective writings and discoveries.
So the purpose of intellectual property protection is to promote the progress of science, and
it does so by giving inventors a time limited monopoly on the inventions, so they can make
money with their innovation, but only for some time limit and an exchange.
The inventor needs to kind of give the right to use the innovation to the public after
that time has lapsed.
So it's a deal the government does with all inventors, it says we give you some protection
for some time limited time, in exchange you tell us how the thing works, some kind of
protection mechanisms, and after the protection expires, everybody, the whole society is able
to use your invention for free.
That is an ideal and the purpose is to promote the progress of science.
We will have a little discussion afterwards, whether the laws are still aligned to actually
promote the progress of science, or whether they are creating so high hurdles nowadays,
that it kind of hinders innovation sometimes more than it promotes the progress.
So why don't I like the term intellectual property protection so much?
I think it's a conflation, it's a gross simplification of things, because we will see there are many
different ways and protection mechanisms to protect intellectual property.
And they work in very different ways, they protect very different things, and because
they protect different things in different ways, it's kind of too simple to simply speak
of intellectual property protection.
We will go through a list of protection mechanisms and see how they work, and learn some other
differences.
So then we will be able to kind of understand what can be protected in what ways, and not
just talking about IP protection.
Nonetheless, it's the umbrella term that we use and that I will use, but keep in mind
that all these mechanisms do different things, and they're protected in very different ways.
So let's get started.
What mechanisms to protect intellectual property are there?
Take a little break and make a brainstorming list, and come up with all the protection
mechanisms that you can think of, and then we'll see each other in a few minutes back.
Okay, how many have you come up with?
Let's see how many I find.
So my list is norms, secrecy, patents, copyrights, contracts, trademarks, and database rights,
which is a European thing.
So let's go through this list and see what they protect and how they protect things.
Actually, the one thing that people often forget is norms, and norms is not a law, but
it's social norms, it's informal.
And many professions have code of conduct, have norms that kind of say like, well, we
should honor intellectual property.
As a chef in a restaurant, you should not steal another chef's recipe and claim that
it's yours.
You're supposed to give credit, and if you don't, you will be expelled, you will be socially
punished by the other French chefs.
They will not talk to you, they will not give you any more recipes, they will kind of expel
you from their community.
So architects have similar code of conduct and social norms.
Or stand-up comedians have a norm of not stealing jokes from each other without giving credit.
Of course it does happen, but kind of social norms are an important tool to protect your
innovations with non-legal means.
Another way to protect your innovations is simply by keeping them secret.
So trade secrets are a way of protecting your innovations.
If you're a bank, a financial institution, and you have come up with a great algorithm
to trade stocks and shares and make a lot of money with that, well, you will probably
not put it out in the form of a patent, but you will simply apply it and keep it secret.
What's the advantage or disadvantage of doing that?
Well, the advantage is really easy to do and you don't have to disclose your innovation.
The disadvantage is once it is leaked, once it is out in the world, well, there's no real
way to protect it anymore.
So you must not rely on things remaining a trade secret.
These two are pretty easy and straightforward, but they are pretty important.
Some industries, for example, banks, financial institutions, they rely a lot on trade secrets.
So these are important ones, but easy to understand.
One thing is a bit more difficult to understand.
So let's talk a bit more in detail about that.
And this is patents.
And there's various forms of patents.
So there's a design patent, which is about kind of a form, a shape.
So you might have heard about Apple, a patent at some point in time, a rectangular device
with rounded corner.
So basically all the tablets infringed on Apple's patent, that was a design patent.
They are welled for 14 years.
We are not going to talk about design patents here, but we are talking about real innovations.
So the patents were what we think of when we talk about patents.
And a patent is exactly that, what the US Constitution has said.
It's the exclusive right that the state grants for a certain time period to an innovator
in exchange for the public disclosure of a device, a method, a process, or a composition.
So this is an ideal the government makes.
You would tell us how the thing works.
We give you a time limit monopoly.
And after the patent expires, everybody is able to use it for free using the explanation
of how the patent actually works.
And remember, the purpose of patents is, again, to progress the science and useful arts.
Also here.
How old are patents?
Actually pretty old.
The Venetians have used them in the Middle Ages, and the UK has followed pretty afterwards.
In the US, we have patents since 1787.
And the first patent was actually granted in 1790.
How long are patents valid?
So how long do they last?
Actually the first patents were valid for 14 years, and this time was prolonged to 17 years.
And in 1995, there was a global patent harmonization scheme where patents were harmonized or the
rules around patents were harmonized worldwide.
So since 1995, patents are valid for 20 years from the date of filing for a patent.
So you file for a patent, one, two, or three years later it might be granted to you, but
the time starts from the time it is being filed.
And before that patent reform, the first to invent something would get a patent.
So imagine two people invent the telephone, both file for a patent, so who should get that patent?
Previously it was the first to invent the patent, the innovation.
So, but that is really, really hard to prove.
Well, I had that a year 20 years ago and it just lay unused in my drawer, how are you
supposed to prove that?
And sometimes people have basically come up with the same idea.
So whether Alexander Graham Bell or Philipp Reiss invented the telephone, both basically
did it at the same time.
Since that patent reform, the patent goes to the first who files for the patent, the
first who applies for a patent, of course that is pretty easy to prove and to show.
And previously there were things called submarine patents where you would get a patent, but
you did not have to show that you have a patent.
And if somebody infringed, well, you would go there and say, hey, hello, see, I have
that nice patent, how about you give me some of your money?
So now patents are public knowledge as soon as they're granted and there's no way to
kind of have hidden patents.
Okay, I think that is pretty clear.
Well, who files or who has the most patents?
Which country has the most patents?
What do you think?
Because the agency's a few years to compile that data apparently.
So I have data for 2016 and actually China is the country that has most patent application
nowadays followed by the US.
And this leads to interesting implications because China is not the one country that
is historically known to honor the patent system very well.
But now that China has lots of patents, they actually have lots of incentives to honor
and keep the patent system intact.
Okay, so, but we see patents or kind of the number of patent application.
If we look at the number of patent applications over time, there's no need to really kind
of look deeper into the numbers.
You can see that the number of patent applications have exploded over the last 10, 20 years.
So this is really something that has taken off and patents have become a lot more numerous
and often unfortunately pretty vague.
And that leads to problems that we are going to discuss in a second.
Okay, let us talk about what a patent protects and what way.
A patent protects an idea or a device process.
It's something abstract, it does not protect a specific implementation.
So if I draw a stick figure, I cannot patent that stick figure because that is an expression
of art and that cannot be patented.
But a new way to construct a stick figure out of sticks, that could be protected.
It's an idea, it's a process and that would kind of prevent everybody else from using
the ideas that are spelled out in that patent without getting a license from me.
What criteria does invention and innovation need to have so that it can actually get a patent?
Three, it must be novel.
So a patent must actually be new, not state-of-the-art knowledge.
And the patent officers are supposed to do research and see whether somebody who is kind
of in the state-of-the-art could actually have known that or say like, no, we use that
all the time, it's not new, it must be new.
A patent must be non-obvious.
Again a patent officer would do some research and say, hey, isn't that trivial?
Isn't that an obvious way of doing things?
And if it's obvious, they are supposed to not grant a patent.
And last, a patent is supposed to be useful.
So I cannot patent anything, but it must actually fulfill a specific purpose, it must be useful.
These three criteria, it must be novel, must be non-obvious, and it must be useful.
Then we get a patent that kind of protects the whole idea, the process, way of doing
things and all implementations, all that implement the ideas spelled out in the patent are infringing.
Well, novel, non-obvious, and useful sounds pretty interesting, but as you can see with
a patent that I've shown you on the slide, this is actually a patent that has been granted,
which is called a method to swing sideboards on a swing.
And so much for novel, non-obvious, and useful, well, useful it might be that in winter is
actually a five-year-old boy with a father, who's a patent lawyer.
The patent has expired since then, but it has actually been granted.
The method of swinging sideboards on a swing was protected for quite a few years in the U.S.
Before I forget to mention that, a patent is only valid for the jurisdiction it is applied
for. So when I apply for a patent in the U.S., that does not mean that the thing is also
protected in Europe or China. So I need to apply in the specific areas and in the specific
jurisdictions to also have protection there. There's a way, which is the abbreviation is
PCT, to apply for a patent and when it's granted it's valid in 150 countries.
So, there are attempts to harmonize patents and kind of make them valid on a nearly global
scale. But the patent is only valid in the jurisdiction it is granted.
Let us give some more examples of novel, non-obvious, and useful because you might see that is sometimes
a bit tricky. I show you four patents and three of these have actually been granted
and one has been rejected. So, take a quick guess at which of these patents have been
granted and which of these patents have been rejected or which of this has been rejected.
On the left hand, you have the leaf trap trousers, which is the problem in autumn when
all the leaves fall from the trees and the sidewalks are dirty because of all the leaves
lying around. Well, you have these trousers with a mesh between the legs. You just walk
on the sidewalk and thereby kind of clean the sidewalk from all the leaves. That is
patent number one. Number two, that nice looking man with a patent which is called the Skrotel
Support Garment and I'm not going to give you German translation for that now and here.
Try to Google it Skrotel Support Garment, which is essentially some type of cloth.
This is patent number two. The third one is cows fart a lot. So, somebody said, hey,
why can we not kind of capture all that and keep the gas and use the gas for heating our
houses. It's basically a cow gas factory for each cow, patent number three. And the fourth
is basically the baseball hat for your dog, patented. Three of these have been granted,
one not. Let me resolve the tension which one has not been granted. Well, actually the
Skrotel Support Garment has been rejected. It's a real patent application, but it has
been rejected by a patent officer and why? Because he said it's not novel. That patent
actually that innovation exists. The patent officer in his letter of decision included
a picture of that movie and those of you who know movies from that time will recognize
Borat if you're not, if not Google him, Borat actually has this type of trousers. So the
patent officer says, sorry, it does not fit the novel part, patent application rejected.
Nice rejection letter. Let me finish with one more patent which has also been granted
and how when we talk about the diffusion of innovation, fortunately has not diffused.
This is an apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force. All the women
among you might squirm now. This is actually a centrifugal thing where women are kind of
strapped onto and then the whole thing spins around and the child is supposed to pop out
and be caught in some kind of net when it pops out due to the high centrifugal forces.
This has been granted in 1965. Fortunately, we haven't seen widespread adoption of that.
Okay, so much for patents and what they patent, how long they are well. We have talked about
market for technologies. Sometimes the person or firm who invents something is not also
the person or firm that actually makes the things, but it license out a patent. There's
many reasons why a firm would have a patent, but not create a product or a service themself
and they are called non-practicing entities. Non-practicing entity has patent, holds a
patent, but does not manufacture things. It license out things. It might not have the
funding required to build a thing or it might be a patent or not. It might not have a patent
holding company that exists for tax reasons and is separate from the real manufacturer.
I quote somebody who knows something there, the executive office of the president said,
actually to paraphrase, that is a good thing that these firms exist because they allow
inventors to focus on what they do best and allow manufacturers to manufacture things.
So, it's this market for technology that it enables. But there's a problem. Many of
the patents are so broad and also shallow, remember my kind of examples of silly patents
that it's really kind of easy to infringe on things. Sometimes these non-practicing
entities sue the heck out of everybody who creates something and who infringes on something.
These firms that make a living by suing other or litigating other companies and individuals
are called patent trolls. They get patents, they litigate or license patents out, they
never make anything. And usually when a firm litigates another firm, what the other firm
does is they make counterclaim, hey, I infringe on yours, but you infringe on mine patent,
so let's kind of settle things. If you're a non-practicing entity, you can't do a counterclaim,
it's an empty shell that you can't really hurt. These patent trolls are a real problem
to the economy. I won't quote inside all the numbers from the studies that I've collected.
So there's a high number, a high cost in defending against assertions from these patent trolls.
And it's not only Google, Microsoft and Apple suffering from these, but small and medium-sized
entities are the one that are being sued often. So that is a problem. And how can you protect
against patent trolls? Well, that is really tricky. You can do a patent search, but that
is problematic because there are so many patents that are so vague and broad that it's sometimes
tricky to know which patents exist. And also there's a thing called willful infringement.
So if I know that a patent exists and I infringe on it, then it's willful, it's mood-villic.
And then I have to pay triple fees, I have to pay much higher fees when I willfully infringe
on a patent. If I kind of can claim, oh, I didn't know the patent exists, it's much cheaper.
And the consequence for software developing firms, for example, is often that firms tell
their employees, don't even look at patents. Of course, it's much cheaper if you have not
known about them than if you know about them and you willfully infringe on them. There's
advisory services consultants that will help you defend and circumvent patent trolls. There's
so-called collaborative licensing schemes where firms put together a pool of patents
and say like, hey, we promise not to sue each other, basically, and to defend collectively
against each other if some of us is being litigated. There's insurances somewhat and
firms also buy problematic patents. So that is some of the ways, but you can't really
protect yourself against these patent trolls and they are a big problem. In some industries,
there's also a lot of fight going on and patents are used as weapons in this fight.
So in the kind of 2000s, 2010s, there was a mobile patent war where basically all mobile
phone manufacturers were suing each other. You don't have to understand or look closer
into the chart. It basically says every smartphone producer sued every smartphone producer.
And Apple was really pissed off that Android kind of stole many of the ideas that Apple
claimed to have invented and innovated. So they have sued the Android world a lot and
Steve Jobs said he was willing to go to a thermonuclear war over Android. So Apple was
kind of a big actor in that mobile patent war. So much for patents. I would like to
keep it with that. Patents are a real interesting area, but they are also a real difficult area.
Of course, they are different jurisdictions and as you might have seen, what is novel,
non-obvious and useful, sometimes very much in the eye of the beholder. What is important
to remember is that patents protect an abstract idea, a process or some device, some hardware.
There is dispute, for example, where they can patent software. Of course, software is
not a device, it is not a process. So the solution so far, and this is heavily disputed,
the solution so far in the patent text is very often. We have a black box that does
this what the software does and that is being patented. So difficult area. Let's move on
to another way to protect intellectual property and that is copyright. Copyright does not
protect abstract ideas. Copyright protects very specific implementation of an expression
of art, not the idea. So if I draw a car, the car is being copyrighted. This image of
a car is being copyrighted by me. It is my car and you are not allowed to print it on
a poster and sell it because it is copyrighted by me. Does it prevent you from also drawing
a car and selling that as a poster? No. And that is the difference to patents. It protects
this specific expression of art but not the general principle, the abstract idea behind
that. So if I make a 3D model of myself, that 3D model is copyrighted. I still can make
a 3D model of myself. That is not affected by copyright. Copyright is basically valid
in nearly all countries. The so-called Berne Convention where basically all countries are
part of says copyright applies to work by default. That used to be different until 1976
in the US. You needed to register copyright to be able to enforce it but now it is automatically
and applied by default. Anything I write, that I draw, that is somehow creative and can be
claimed to be an expression of art. Writing a software for example is an expression of
art. Writing a novel, writing a poem, drawing a picture, designing a bottle, all that is
an expression of art that is automatically copyrighted. I don't have to write this copyright
sign or all rights reserved. It is applied automatically. And that makes it a very powerful
protection mechanism and sometimes it is really more strict than we wanted to. If I sent you
a long email, that is clearly a creative expression of art. If you forward that email, you know
what? You infringe on my copyright. Of course the email that I sent is copyrighted by me.
If you forward it, you create another copy, you multiply it and that is infringement on
copyright. So be careful when you put out other people's emails on a web page for example.
Or what if I want to sell a coke of can on eBay? I google for pictures of cans of coke,
I download that image and put it on the eBay page so people know what they are actually
buying. Careful there. That image of a can of coke is most certainly copyrighted and
therefore I cannot use it on my eBay page, on the selling page. But that does not prevent
me from taking a picture of a can of coke and uploading that picture to kind of show
what I am selling. That would be okay and I would be owning the copyright to that. And
because copyright applies by default and automatically, sometimes I have the problem
that if I want to share things or if I want others to be able to use things that I have
done, I need to relax copyright somehow and how we can do that we will see a bit later.
Another example is if you see a nice story and you share an image on social media, be
careful. Even if you press the share button on a newspaper, you are copying an image which
might be copyrighted by somebody. There have actually been lawsuits because people have
been sued by the copyright holder of a photograph that has been shared and multiplied on a social
media platform. So we need to be really careful when it comes to copyright or including pictures
in your presentations etc. etc. all that. Actually, if you have a copyright holder,
your presentations etc. etc. all that.
Actually, how long does copyright last? In the S at least, it used to be 14 years when
it was introduced on a federal basis on 1790 and you could register it for another 14 years.
It has been extended for a couple of times and since 1998 in the S, that's in the current
state, in the S copyright on my works lasts until the author's death plus 70 years or
if it's done as a job for a company, it's author's death plus 95 years or 120 years.
I'll give you the numbers on a slide a bit later. In Europe, since 1993, the same time
limit applies. It's author's death plus 70 years. So the car that I have drawn will be
protected until 70 years after I am dead. That was quite a long time and that is one
reason why we need to think, is this really the right way to promote the progress of science
and arts? Remember, that's the purpose of copyright, promote the progress of science
and art. My children will have 70 years until after my death to make money with this nice
looking car.
Copyright is also a tricky thing. It's not very easy and very black and white like all
things that are enshrined in law. So if you think about this nice picture, this nice picture
was taken by Naruto. Naruto is the monkey. It's a monkey selfie. You might have seen
that story. That photographer, Mr. Slater, left his camera for a while. That monkey came,
it examined the camera, it made a picture of himself and so that image was uploaded
to Wikipedia.
In 2014, three years later, David Slater, the photographer, asked Wikipedia to take
down the picture. Wikipedia said, hey, you have not taken that image. You don't have
any copyright in that image, right? So how can you ask us to take it down? The monkey
would have to tell us to take it down. And then Naruto, or Petter, the animal protection
agency, sued David Slater, said, hey, you're claiming copyright on a picture that the monkey
took. And this became a horrible legal struggle. And basically, at some point, the judge said,
you know what, animals could have copyright on things. But as the law is being written,
it doesn't really explicitly state that. So the Congress or the president would need to
extend the law to explicitly state that monkeys, that animals, can own the copyright of things.
And it took until 2017 when the thing was settled and basically without any decision
being reached. And it took until 2018 that the court said, no, the photographer, David
Slater, has all the rights on that picture. By that point in time, Mr. Slater was so broken
that he said, I am considering giving up my career as a photographer and becoming a tennis
coach or a dog walker instead. So Naruto has had quite a difficult history in terms of
copyright and an important role there. Copyright can be really, really strict and fuzzy and
weak. You might know the song Happy Birthday to You. If you sung it, you might be liable
to license fees because Warner Brothers claimed they owned a copyright to that song. And they
wanted money for all public performances. For example, they sent bills to the Boy Scouts
when they sang Happy Birthday to You at the campfire. Then basically they sent bills.
So like, would you please play? That was a public performance. And there have been kind
of estimations that said Warner Brothers earned around two million each year for Happy Birthday
to You. The creator of Happy Birthday died in 1946. So the copyright expired in the EU
in 2017. And in 2016, the court said, oh, you know what, Warner? You don't really own the
copyright on that song. So we strike that. There's no copyright on that. So nowadays,
you can sing that song without being scared, but kind of shows you how tricky and difficult
copyright can be. Next to Naruto and Happy Birthday, there's another important figure
that plays an important role when it comes to copyright and the duration of copyright.
Of course, you remember that strange figure, plus death plus 95 years if you have worked
for a company. How the heck could such a complicated rule be put into place? This guy is at fault.
Mickey Mouse and specifically the movie Steamboat Willie was released in 1928. And it nearly
went into public domain four times. And if that movie had gone into public domain, pictures
from Steamboat Willie could be used for anything, commercials, news stories, et cetera, et cetera.
Disney is not too happy about that. So every time when this, nearly before this happened,
the copyright duration was prolonged by the yes. And the last time that happened in 1998,
and in a law act that was also called by the public, the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.
And now Steamboat Willie will be protected until 2023. And we'll see what happens shortly before.
Just to show you, this is an example I took from Wikipedia, how long kind of how the timeframe
of the duration of copyright has been extended tremendously over the course of history.
So from 14 plus 14, 28 years to something that is 105 years, that is quite a long, long time
based on the assumptions specified below. And to make things even more difficult, copyright
is different in different jurisdictions. So what is in the public domain in Canada might
be protected in the yes or vice versa. And depending on when the work was created and
what rules were in place at that point in time, copyright terms can be really, really tricky
and difficult. If you want to see a detailed list, check out that link to the Cornell website
that I've given you. It nicely lists when a work has been created and when will it become a public domain,
when will copyright expire, and it will show you how complicated and how complex things really can be.
The rule of thumb that we want to remember, and that is all that we want to remember really
in terms of duration, is the U and U.S. It's usually author death, death plus 70 years.
This is how long copyright lasts. If a firm possesses something, it's even more difficult,
but usually it's author death plus 70 years. This is what the time of copyright is valid.
I said that copyright applies automatically. So what if I want others to reuse or remix
the picture of a color that I have drawn? Or if I write open source software and I want others
to be able to copy that software. By default, they are not allowed to do that because copyright forbids it
and copyright applies automatically. If I want open source software, for example, I need to relax copyright.
If I want others to use the song or to make use of the picture that I've taken, I need to relax copyright somehow.
One way to do that is to attach a license, essentially a contract to my content, that relaxes copyright.
There's a whole range of licenses that are really, really free and some are really, really weird.
Some of my favorites are here. Do what the fuck you want, a public license.
A public license is basically the what the fuck you want with a content that I've created, but don't sue me if it explodes.
Or the beerware license, which says if you like the thing, buy me a beer. That is a nice one.
One that I have not seen a lot in interaction is the chicken dance license, unfortunately,
which says for every thousand devices that are being sold, you need to listen or dance to the chicken dance for two minutes.
The BSD license is essentially also don't sue me if things go wrong, but otherwise do whatever you want.
These really free licenses allow others to take my work and close it and make it proprietary.
For example, if I've written a software, it allows others to create a software product out of that, not share their improvements further.
But if I want that, if I want that improvements that others do to my work are also shared again,
then there's a way to do that. And that has been invented by Richard Stallman, the inventor of free software, the concept of free software.
That is all rights reversed. Copy left and copy left schemes use contract line copyright law to protect code against appropriation.
So they turn the concept of copyright on the head and make sure it remains shareable and that you need to share things.
So if I give you my software or let me if I give you my car under a copy left license and you do something with that car image,
you also need to share that result under a similar copy left license.
Thereby the copy left aspect spreads. This is why Steve Ballmer when he was CEO of Microsoft called the whole concept of copy left cancer or viral.
Of course, it spreads and kind of whenever you use something that is copy left it, I also need to share it under a copy left license.
That is the concept behind that. Some of the examples of a copy left license are the GNU GPL, the GNU general public license, which is suitable for software and one which I would like to present a little bit more detail,
which is called the Creative Commons license, which is a very modular set of license which you can apply to your content.
And I want to explain it a little bit in detail because this is a really useful way to attach license to images, to blog posts or to your master thesis that you have created.
Of course, think if you create a master thesis, you might want others to copy that master thesis and share it.
By default, it's copyrighted and they are not allowed to do that.
So if you want to allow that people share your master thesis, you need to attach a license to it.
If you take a nice picture and you want others to be able to share it on social media, you need to attach a license that allows that.
Check out Creative Commons and explain it in much more detail and in all languages and for lawyers and for laymen, they have a modular set of licenses.
The easiest one is the attribution license, which is, you have to say, I used the image by Mr. Spad, but you can do with that image whatever you want.
You can improve it, you can cut it, you can kind of slice it, you can print it out and I don't know, I don't want to know what you can do with it, but you can do anything with it.
You can also attach a non-commercial license, which is then, you have to say, this is the image by Mr. Spad and you can use it, but you are not allowed to make money with it.
So, you can put it in your master thesis that you are not allowed to print it on a poster and sell it. That is the meaning of non-commercial.
Share alike is in the copy left aspect that I have mentioned. So, if I publish my car image on the share alike license, you can improve on that.
You always have to say, this is derived and built upon the car by Mr. Spad, and the result has also to be shared on the share alike license.
So, others can also have the guarantee, the right to also be able to improve and drive on that.
If you want people to be able to share your master thesis, but not to print a book and sell that book, or you don't want them to change the text of your master thesis, because this is my master thesis,
and I want that people are able to copy it, but not to extend it or cut a chart or improve on it, then you could choose a license, which says, this is the master thesis by Mr. Spad, I am not allowed to print it and make money with it, and I am not allowed to create derivatives, so that is the ND aspect, no derivative, I am not allowed to change the master thesis, but I can copy it.
So, this is a modular set of licenses. Check it out, the course is useful, whether you have a blog, whether you are active on social media, whether you write any kind of published pictures, write poems, that you want others to be able to share, you need to think about these issues.
In some cases, I am allowed to use things, even if they are copyrighted.
And yes, that concept is called fair use. Germany doesn't really have a fair use concept, but they have something called Schrankenes-Uerheberechts, which gives similar rights.
So, I can use copyrighted material without asking for permission of the owner, if I want to cite a reference or create a parody of something.
So, I can draw a funny nose in the picture of Mona Lisa, if this is supposed to be a parody of Mona Lisa.
Or I can cite a sentence from Harry Potter without infringing on the copyright, because it's really just that it's a citation, which is perhaps one sentence out of the whole book.
Education, fortunately, has some exceptions. So, in Germany, recently changed rules, for example, say that I can take 15% out of any book and include that in my presentations and texts.
But I am not allowed to share that publicly in worldwide, I am only allowed to share it with my students in a non-profit setting. So, some exceptions for education.
I can include things, up to a certain, how much can I include things, that depends on the effect of a potential market value of a copyrighted work.
I am allowed to take one sentence, perhaps. So, am I allowed to take half a page? Am I allowed to take one page out of Harry Potter and reproduce that?
So, the market value, and that is something where no real answer exists, and where lawyers will sue you and the court will decide what an acceptable market value of a copyrighted work is.
Just to kind of mention the discussion that is, or the legal changes that are ongoing in the EU, which is this Leistungschutzrecht, you might know Google News.
Google News does nothing but cite a bit of news articles and aggregate that on a news webpage. It clearly takes some copyrighted article.
And Google has been sued by news agencies. Of course, they have taken the title or five or six words from their article, and these news agencies says that's too much.
You are stealing your copywriting, our copyrighted work. So, that can be rather low limit until you reach kind of infringement of copyrighted work.
There's also another exception, which is called the so-called freedom of panorama. So, am I allowed to take a picture of the White House when I'm in front of the White House?
Yes, I am. As long as I'm on a public place in a public space, I'm allowed to take pictures of buildings that I can see from that public space.
In some jurisdictions, I can also take pictures of art, monuments, statues from a public space. In some jurisdictions not, for example, in the US, I'm allowed to take pictures of buildings from public spaces, but not art.
And in 2016, there has been a lawsuit in Sweden because Wikipedia compiled a list of art monuments and included pictures to these art monuments and said, hey, this is a list of art monuments in Sweden together with pictures.
And the court said, this infringes on copyright. These were all monuments that were in the public, but the result was not permitted and not legal.
So, last example. The Eiffel Tower is a building and there's a freedom of panorama ornament. You are allowed to take pictures of the Eiffel Tower.
The Eiffel Tower at night. There's a light installation and it does not count as a building and it's copyrighted.
So, if you take a picture of the Eiffel Tower at night with the lights visible on it and you want to sell that as a poster, expect post from the lawyers in French.
Okay, so much for fair use and I would like to finish the topic of copyright there. Just to recap, copyright lasts for a long time.
Author death plus seven years in the usual settings and it applies automatically of specific expressions of arts, but not on generic ideas or processes.
Okay, let's move on to the next protection mechanism.
The next protection mechanism that I would like to introduce is a trademark. And what does a trademark do?
The purpose of a trademark is to protect customers from fraud.
So, if I buy a Coca-Cola that I can be sure that I get the real thing and don't have any kind of cheap and poisonous liquid.
So, to prevent confusion of products, the trademarks have been introduced.
And what can be protected with a trademark? Actually, anything that makes a product recognizable and can prevent confusion.
So, that could be the name, Priel. That could be a logo. That could be any other feature that makes it recognizable.
T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekon tried to protect the color magenta for a while and forbid anybody else from using the color magenta because they said, hey, that's ours.
It could be some typical sound in an advert that a firm does. It could be the type of a bottle, the shape of a bottle that could be a trademark.
Okay. So, do I have to register for a trademark to kind of make something protected? Actually, not.
If I use some product and I introduce a product called Fisslebiss and Fisslebiss has been on the market for 10 years and another person introduces Fisslebiss, I can kind of say, hey, you are infringing on my trademark.
It does not need to be registered to be wallet, but it can be registered and that helps me to prove that I actually own a trademark.
And the difference is if you have this little R in a circle, that's a registered trademark. And if you have this little TM, that simply means trademark.
So, if I have a software called Fisslebiss, can you open a pizzeria called Fisslebiss? Actually, yes, you can.
Because a trademark applies to a certain category of product or service and there's a number of categories and software is a different category from a pizzeria.
Of course, there's no possibility of customer confusion. So, we could have pizzeria and a software with the same name without infringing on each other trademarks.
This or an example of that is Apple. Steve Jobs created the Apple logo and Steve Jobs was a big fan of the Beatles.
The publisher of the Beatles records was Apple Records with this logo.
You can see that there might be a problem coming up, but actually one created computers, hardware, the other sold music records.
No possibility for consumer confusion until iTunes.
Of course, then Apple started to publish media music. It essentially entered the same category as Apple Records, which is defunct but still existed.
And there was a lawsuit and basically the whole thing was settled and Apple paid Apple an undisclosed sum of money and the whole problem went away.
So, but you can see how that happens.
Okay, I'm not going to tell my favorite story of the crowdsourcing bottle of Priel and the winning entry is Schmeck-Lecke-Nachenkin.
That is a funny and different story, but this is, of course, we'll cut that short. Google it. It's a funny story.
So one of the things with trademarks is I need to protect my trademark and enforce my trademark or I lose it.
This causes a dilemma for firms. On the one hand, I want fans that love my trademarks and that build on it and extend it.
On the other hand, if they do, they infringe on my trademark. Now, if I'm not careful, I will lose it.
So think of fan fiction, for example. There's lots of Harry Potter books being written by fans.
Some of them should not be shown in these public slides, but some of them are really cool.
So what should J.K. Rowling do? Because Harry Potter is certainly a trademark.
If I allow everybody to write Harry Potter novels, she will lose the Harry Potter trademark and it will not be protected anymore by her and the publishing company.
So she needs to send the lawyers against these fan fiction sites. This is, for example, what happened with legal mindstorms.
The game came out, fans created legal mindstorms websites and created cool things out of legal mindstorms.
And the legal mindstorms websites contained legal mindstorms, logos and all that and infringed heavily on trademarks.
So legal sent the lawyers after them with cease and desist letters and kind of punished their biggest fans by sending horribly angry sounding letters by lawyers.
It's a very tricky and difficult trade off that firms need to undertake to kind of protect my brand, but let also users experiment with our products and build on these for a while.
If you do not protect them, you lose your patents, your trademarks.
So the so-called generalized trademarks are, for example, Thermos. Thermos are escalator, which used to be trademarks, which basically do not mean anything nowadays anymore.
Effectively, in Britain, you use a Hoover to vacuum clean your apartment, even if your vacuum cleaner is not the brand Hoover, you use a Hoover.
And Hoover has become a generic term which cannot be really enforced anymore.
So as a company, on the one hand, you want to become a verb, you want to become the verb, but that can also cause problems.
For example, if you are Google and people Google something, even if they use Bing or some other search engine, your trademark becomes a runs danger of being generalized.
And for example, when the Swedish dictionary proposed the word to Google as a term for to search the Internet, Google interfered and said, no, no, no, no.
That does not mean to search the Internet. It means to use the Google product to search the Internet and nothing else because they did not want to run danger of losing Google as a trademark.
You don't want that. These are Thermo, Aspirin in the US. All these these terms are generalised terms.
Jacuzzi Sharpie pens. These are examples of generalised terms that are effectively not really enforceable anymore as a trademark because they have become generic terms for certain type of products.
OK, so far for trademarks. Just remember, they protect anything that makes a product or a service recognisable.
And the purpose of a trademark is to protect customers from confusion and fraud so that if they buy a Harry Potter novel, they actually get a Harry Potter novel.
Fun footnote of history. There have been exchanges in social media by two people and said, like, have you read Harry Potter? I'm so I'm I was so sad when Harry died in the last novel.
And everybody was like, what? It turned out this person had read a fake Harry Potter and where Harry had died in the last novel. So this is exactly what the trademark supposed to prevent.
OK, let's move on to a last thing. This which is called database rights. And this is a very European thing. And it means a database as a whole can be protected if it was difficult to assemble.
Even if the content of the database is not copyrightable. So it's the word that is being used. There is sweat of the brow. So it has been very labour some to compile that list.
Then the database as a whole is being protected. And this was important when it came to phone numbers, when phone books were digitalised and companies sold phone book CDs in the 1990s.
We are Deutsche Telekomungs said, hey, this is copyrighted by us. There's a database right on that because the phone number of Mr. Spet is not copyrightable. It's a fact.
And a fact is not a creative expression of art. It cannot be copyrighted. So but the list of names and phone numbers as a whole, this is protected by database, right?
The same is valid for our for geographic databases. Think open street map, which is essentially a list of geographic locations with features at this latitude and longitude.
There's a trash can at this latitude and longitude. There's a street light, a street lamp. This is not a copyrightable fact, per se, but the whole thing is protected by database rights.
But because this is difficult to enforce and only European thing, they have moved towards a different license with open street map. But database rights are still a thing.
Okay, let's move on. So we have got to know a lot of different ways to protect intellectual property. And when it comes to open and user innovation projects, for example, or many innovations, per se, they work by modifying, abusing or deriving existing products, using them in different ways.
So with intellectual property protection, this is often illegal. But manufacturers often tolerate that as long as it is not kind of commercial or big or successful.
But if you increasingly adopt being as successful and commercialize what you have come up with, you might run into trouble after a while. So machinima is an example, using computer games to create short video sequences, sketches, even movies.
This infringes on the copyright of the figures that are in Halo, for example, that it's okay as long as you are not really commercializing that and successful, but there are companies, one is Rooster Teeth, that makes money with machinima movies, and then you can run actually into problem a bit later.
Similar with fan fiction. There's lots of fan fiction that extends certain things. You might have heard of Axana. Axana is a Star Trek sequel that on a crowdfunding platform attracted a couple million US dollars and had a pretty professionally written script.
And they wanted to create a new Star Trek movie without the approval of the trademark and copyright holders. So basically, the lawyers went after them and Axana was never produced.
So as long as you're not successful, things are going under flying under the radar, but when you start to become big and successful, you can run into trouble. So this keep this in mind, if your innovation works on abusing or breaking the law in a way that could lead to trouble a bit later.
There's a second problem, and that is independent of law. Of course, many things nowadays are protected by technology rather than by law.
And this limits what you can do and what you can derive. And there's no law basically protecting you there. I can modify, resell and use a book that I bought for all purpose.
I can use a book as a door stopper if I want. I can resell a book on a flea market if I want. But with an ebook, things are different.
I am bound by contract law that says, oh, you're not allowed to lend out your ebook to another person. It's probably even forbidden by using some digital rights management.
Because you do not really buy these things, but you license them. So the code, the software becomes the law and it kind of says what you can do.
If you ever had an PDF file that says, oh, you're not allowed to print this PDF file or you're only allowed to save it three times. This is exactly what I what I talk about.
So you are limited by technology. So Microsoft used to have a cell music and they had a digital rights management system that was ironically called place for sure.
And place for sure was turned off 2009. All this music that you had bought was lost. It suddenly stopped playing so much for place for sure.
So what we have is that technology and intellectual property laws, as they are right now, are often so strict that we are increasingly limited by what we can do with the stuff that we buy.
And that protection is so strict 70, 80, 95 years after we die, that basically, realistically, we can never use things that have been created in our lifetime, because they are copyrighted for so long.
We have to think then, is this still the system that the US Constitution described? Intellectual property protection is set up or the purpose is to progress science and arts.
And I got the feeling that the pendulum has kind of swung a little bit towards the protection side of things and less the progress side of things.
And that we are really a situation where it's hard to build upon things and do with things, whatever we want.
The servitization of our society, so moving from products to services does not help there, because we own less and we kind of rent more.
Your Spotify collection will be gone when you stop subscribing to Spotify. You can only do with Spotify songs what Spotify allows you to do.
Okay, so much for that. I would like to talk and repeat some of the things that I have mentioned about patents and the problem with the patent system.
But the fact is, somebody else said that much better than I could ever do it.
So at this point in a lecture, I would show you the video. But for copyright reasons, I will ask you to go to the link and watch that YouTube video, which is, if you Google John Oliver patent troll, this will be the first hit that you find.
It's a bit old by now, but it's still true and still valid. So it's about 20 minutes. And I think it's both funny and informative. And 95% of what's in there is still true.
The one update that I can give you is that, in contrast to back then, where you could sue in whichever court you want, you will see in the video that eastern eastern Texas County, which is kind of remember that.
Nowadays, you have to sue the state where the headquarter of the companies, not just basically wherever you want. That's the one update that has been happening since that video, but the rest is still true.
So go watch that video. Remember, there's many different ways to protect intellectual property.
And they work in very different ways. And they serve different purposes. This is why I don't like intellectual property protection as a term. But we know now many of the mechanisms that help to protect intellectual property.
Okay. See that video. It's really worth it. I recommend it. See you next time.