What is intellectual property?
A Fable
A US View
A World View
Glossary
Fair Use:
General Criteria
Example
Interpretation
P2P Cases:
The
Current
Problem
(more)
Important Cases
Lawsuits
against individuals
(More Information)
(Example
Letter)
LimeWire:
LimeWire sued for copyright infringement
Current
Situation
Trusted Computing:
Trusted
Computing
Against
DMCA (Digital
Millennium Copyright Act)
Against
Example: Firefox
(Market
Share)
(Timeline)
Other
Examples
Open Formats
Government Adoption
Example 1:
Problem: CS 1023 students sometimes submit .docx files. I would like to read them without going through a resubmission process. [Actually, OpenOffice.org can open .docx files now, but that wasn't true a year ago.]Possible Solutions: Buy Office 2007. Use a web site that translates .docx files to HTML. Use a programming hint from this web site.
My solution: Create a Perl program with the programming hint to partially translate .docx files to plaintext.
Issue: Am I violating any patent or copyright or the DMCA?
Example 2:
Problem: I want to add a feature to a program so the program can find out what folder/directory it is in.Possible Solution: This web site has a program that prints the folder to the screen.
My solution: Modify the program to return the folder name to another program rather than print it out on the screen.
Issue: Am I violating any patent or copyright or the DMCA?
Example 3 is not about software development, but brings up some IP issues:
My mother was interviewed about her participation in WW II. The interview is available as a Real audio stream. I've downloaded the stream into a file, converted it to an .mp3 file, and now plan to make copies available to my family.Issue: Am I violating any patent or copyright or the DMCA?