Lecture 13: Intellectual property
"creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works;
designs; and symbols, names and images used in commerce."
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
• protection mechanisms
– trade secrets
– trademarks
– patents
– copyrights
– licenses
• standards and standardization
• open source / free software
• Warning: IANAL
Trade secrets
• information is a secret held by its owner
• disclosed only under some kind of agreement
– e.g., "non-disclosure agreement" or NDA
• no recourse if secrecy is lost
• often used to argue that information should not be made public
– voting machine technology
– breathalyzer technology
– AI models
– ...
Trademarks
"a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign,
design, or expression that identifies products or services from a
particular source and distinguishes them from others" (Wikipedia)
Patents & copyrights
• US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8:
• "The Congress shall have Power ...
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by
securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the
exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
• "Writings": copyright protects expression but not idea
– you can't copy my program
– but you can implement the same idea in some different form
• "Discoveries": patent protects an idea
– you can't use my patented idea
– but you can achieve the same effect in a different way
• the meaning of "different" is NOT usually clear
Patents
• exclusive right to make, use or sell an invention in US
• valid for 20 years after filing
• requirements:
– statutory subject matter:
process, machine, article of manufacture, composition of matter
– novel
– useful
– unobvious to person having ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing
• contents:
– abstract
– drawings/diagrams
– specifications (narrative description, preferred embodiment)
– claims
Copyright
• protects expression, not idea
• duration used to be 17 years + one renewal
• now life + 70 years, or 95 years for commercial works
– (the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act", 1998)
• "fair use" permits limited copying under some circumstances
– criticism, comment, scholarship, research, news reporting, teaching
• uncertain what fair use really is -- case by case decisions
• considerations:
– purpose and character of the use
– nature of the copyrighted work
– amount and substantiality of the portion used
– effect of the use on potential market or value of the copyrighted work
• recent copyright laws may prevent some fair uses
– can't decrypt to make excerpt for teaching or criticism
– can't reverse engineer to make copies in different media
DMCA: Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998)
• US copyright law: [Link]/title17, Chapter 12
• anticircumvention: illegal to circumvent a technological measure
protecting access to or copying of a copyrighted work
– limited exceptions for reverse engineering for interoperability,
encryption research, security testing
• illegal to remove or alter copyright notices and management
information
• "safe harbor": protects ISPs from copyright infringement claims if they
follow notice and takedown procedures
Licenses
• an agreement (e.g., contract) that allows a particular use of some
software
– that might otherwise be a violation of copyright, patent, etc.
• are shrinkwrap and clickwrap licenses valid and enforceable?
• is licensing replacing purchase?
• are warranty and liability disclaimers for software valid?
Open source / free software
• source code: instructions in a readable programming language
– usually has significant commercial value
e.g., Windows, Office, TurboTax, Photoshop, …
– usually proprietary, secret, not revealed
even if compiled version is given away (e.g., iTunes, Internet Explorer)
• "open source": source code is available, can be use, copied and
modified
– a reaction to restrictions on proprietary code
– promoted by Free Software Foundation, other open source projects &
groups
• various kinds of licenses determine what can be done with it
– mainly concerned with keeping source code open enough that others can
continue to build on it and improve it
– prevents anyone from taking it private / proprietary
• a viable threat to proprietary software in important areas
Free Software Foundation (Richard Stallman, MIT, ~1985)
• plan to build an operating system and all supporting software
– "GNU" -- "GNU's not Unix"
• started non-profit organization called the
Free Software Foundation
• wanted source code to be released so that it could
not be made proprietary, would remain free forever
– "free" as in "free speech", not "free beer"
ok to charge for distribution, support, etc.
• source released under copyright agreement that requires that any
subsequent distribution be covered by the same agreement
• GNU GPL (General Public License): "copyleft"
– full permission to use, copy, modify, distribute modifications
– copies, derivative works, etc., must have the same terms if distributed
– copies, etc., must have the same license attached to them
– NO permission to add further restrictions; explicitly forbidden
• source code has to be freely available
– can't "take it private"
Fundamental Software Ideas
• algorithm: sequence of precise, unambiguous steps
– performs some task and terminates
– based on defined basic / primitive operations
– describes a computation independent of implementation details
• programming language:
– grammar, syntax, and semantics for expressing computation
notation is important
• program: algorithms implemented in a programming language
• compilers, interpreters: programs that convert from the high level
language used by people to a lower level
– a compiler is a program that writes a program
– an interpreter also acts as a computer so the program can be run
• libraries and components: programs written by others
– packaged in a form that can be used in a new program
• abstraction, layers, interfaces, virtualization
– hiding details, pretending to be something else
• bugs: the need for absolute precision
– cover all cases, cope with failures and misuse