Intellectual Property Rights

Module 5 Discussion: Intellectual Property Rights

When I first began attending college back in the 1980’s, before journals articles were stored online – before there was an online – I experienced intellectual property rights (IPR) as a horrendous inconvenience, an obstacle of my educational development, and an affront to my dignity. I could not photocopy journal articles and books in the Michigan State University Library; instead, I had to sit onsite and take notes. I did not care about authors’ rights; I just wanted to write my paper and hopefully earn an A. Anything that made my work more difficult was my enemy. Not long after I earned my B.S., Basic Books successfully sued Kinko’s in 1991 for infringing its copyrights by photocopying course packets; in 1994,Texaco lost an IPR suit to the American Geophysical Society after it photocopied and distributed Society journal articles to corporate researchers (Koehler, 2008).

By the time I earned my M.Ed. in 2004, I could copy anything I wanted in the University of Arkansas Library, and journal articles were beginning to appear on the internet. The fair use doctrine had moved a little in my direction, and I was happy, though I still knew very little about IPR…and I didn’t care. Now, I do care. I am second author on a published journal article (Lincoln & Rademacher, 2006), and I am scheduled to develop a comprehensive online mathematics course during Spring semester, 2011. I am definitely concerned about what I own and to what creations I enjoy user rights.

“IPR are rights given to a person for creations of their mind” (Schlegelmilch, 2010, video). As I discovered while carefully reading the Walden University Code of Conduct, item 4 states that I do not entirely own the creations of my mind, that is, I have ceded my IPR to Walden University for the duration of my degree work (“Code of conduct,” 2010). Then again, I do not entirely “not own” them, either. Walden University appears to use the compromise suggested by Kranch: the sponsoring institution owns the intellectual product – in this case, required literary or video or audio creations – while I retain (I hope) “perpetual right of use, augmentation, and remuneration” (Kranch, 2008, p. 355). Though Kranch focuses on universities and their online faculties, the co-ownership principal would seem to apply here. I am not terribly concerned with “remuneration” for my Walden work; I would just like to copy the papers I write to my blog.

Intellectual property rights are messy, legally speaking. In a litigious culture like ours, parties are willing to sue over them. I have avoided the battle by declaring all my Youtube videos creative commons; the same is true with all my IPRs because I simply do not want to fight. Koehler (2008) points out in his discussion of the current Google Book Search controversy that, before Gutenberg, academics and other authors frequently cut and pasted (literally) their peers’ work into their own; Koehler further states that the United States did not sign the 1886 Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works until 1952…no wonder Europe considered us the wild west.

According to the Association for the Study of Higher Education (2008), IPR makes the post-industrial information economy possible. “Today the economic health of nations and corporations is determined largely by their ability to develop, commercialize, and exploit scientific and technological innovations; intellectual property rights are the legal means by
which one can protect one’s investment in innovation (Wallerstein, Mogee, and Schoen, 1993)” (2008, pp. 3-4). IPR are certainly important enough for the United States government to create an elaborate website designed to educate the populace about every aspect of IPR: Enforcement, patents, trademarks, copyrights, geographical indicators, and both national and international trade which includes in-depth discussions of all bilateral and multilateral treaties (“Office of the Administrator for Policy and External Affairs,” n.d.). Most interesting to me was the Global Intellectual Property Academy (“GIPA,” n.d.) and the i-©®eaTM Intellectual Property Curriculum designed to teach “students about patents, trademarks and copyrights” (“USPTO introduces new intellectual property curriculum,” 2008). I watched two of the videos, but the one I thought most informative discussed the history and protections afforded by the World Trade Organization’s Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) (Schlegelmilch, 2010).

I never imagined that Intellectual Property Rights were so important. Like most people, I think of Napster when I think of IPR infringement; Napster seemed so harmless to me. I record television shows just for my own viewing; is that piracy? Perhaps it is, if my recording an episode of House keeps me from purchasing the end of season DVD collection; it is not impossible that I and the many others who record television episodes might destroy the television industry as we know it.

The Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) states that IPR are essential to the continued existence of academe. According to ASHE, colleges and universities receive millions of dollars in research and development grants every year from the United States government to grow knowledge which they must own in order to return a product to the government. Further, ASHE says that, in 1980, institutions of higher education were given the rights to own copyrights and patents, thus increasing their income (Association for the Study of Higher Education, 2008). It is clear that, if I want my credentials to be respected in the global economy, if I want to enjoy an income in the new world order, I had better be very careful to guard my own and others’ IPR.

References

Association for the Study of Higher Education. (2008). Overview of Intellectual Property. ASHE Higher Education Report, ASHE Higher Education Report Series, 34(4), 1-12. doi: 10.1002/aehe.3405

Code of conduct - Walden University 2009-2010 student handbook. (2010, March). Walden University Student Publications. Student Handbook, Retrieved November 2, 2010, from http://catalog.waldenu.edu/content.php?catoid=11&navoid=911

Koehler, W. (2008). In the matter of plagiarism… practice makes imperfect. Journal of Library Administration, 47(3/4), 111-124. Retrieved from http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a903891269~frm=titlelink

Kranch, D. A. (2008). Who owns online course intellectual property? Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 9(4), 349-356. Retrieved from http://www.infoagepub.com/Quarterly-Review-of-Distance-Education.html

Lincoln, F., & Rademacher, B. (2006). Learning styles of ESL students in community colleges. Community College Journal of Research & Practice, 30(5/6), 485-500. doi:10.1080/10668920500207965

Office of the Administrator for Policy and External Affairs. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.uspto.gov/ip/global/index.jsp

Schlegelmilch, K. (2010). The relationship between trade and intellectual property rights and an overview of the WTO TRIPs agreement. [Video distance learning module]. United States Patent and Trademark Office. USPTO global intellectual property academy. Retrieved from https://uspto.connectsolutions.com/gipatradeenglish/

Training and education: global intellectual property academy (GIPA). (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.uspto.gov/ip/training/index.jsp

USPTO introduces new intellectual property curriculum: i-©®eaTM inspires creativity and teaches students about patents, trademarks, copyrights. [Press Release]. (2008). United State Patent and Trademark Office. Retrieved from http://www.uspto.gov/news/pr/2008/08-16.jsp