Internet Patents, privacy rights and court cases

 

Today in class we discussed property and property rights. Copy right laws have been established to help protect people’s products and ideas. Protecting intellectual property is a challenging subject because it can be hard to prove that you thought of an idea first. Patents are different than copy right laws and are more used to protect inventions. Trademarks are more used for protecting logos, titles, and sayings. The NET act is a pretty recent law to help protect property rights on the internet. All of these laws have been established to help protect individuals and companies. In 2011 the US passed the ACTA which is a bill to help protect things like copy rights and patents on the internet. One of the most recent famous copy right, and patent disputes was back in 2004 when Facebook was first being deployed on the internet. There was a court battle over Facebook when it first came out at Harvard University. The court battle was over who should get credit (ownership) for the site. The fight had a lot to-do with intellectual property and who owned it. The court case ended up dividing the ownership of Facebook to several people and paying out several others for the use of their rights and ideas. In more recent times Yahoo has sued Facebook over patents rights regarding advertisements. Stated in an article I read “Yahoo sued Facebook over 10 patents that include methods and systems for advertising on the Web, opening the first major legal battle among big technology companies in social media.” You can find a link to this article at the bottom of the post. This court case help sets some guidelines for patent right infringement on the internet. The funny thing is that Yahoo and Facebook have been business partners for a while now and the fact that Yahoo is suing Facebook is a surprising move to some. While companies like Facebook and Google have thrived in recent years, Yahoo has not. Yahoo has over 3,000 patents while Facebook only has 160, according to the article. The ethics involved in deciding who owns what can be a cumbersome task. I think that is important to protect people’s property and intellectual property and court case like Yahoo vs. Facebook will help us figure out how these laws should be enforced. “"If what Yahoo is saying is literally true, then it seems like a lot of companies would be liable," said Shubha Ghosh, a professor who specializes in intellectual property at The University of Wisconsin Law School. But he added, much would depend on whether a judge defines the patents broadly or narrowly.” This was mentioned in the article, and brings up a good point. I think we have an ethical responsibility to better define these policies so there is so much digression of the judge. As professional we should have standard to follow in deciding things like this. Judges should have a set of common standards for judging things because one judge could have a narrow view will another could have a broader view in what a patent or copyright might include.

 
Links:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/12/us-yahoo-facebook-lawsuit-idUSBRE82B18M20120312
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/yahoo-and-facebook-said-to-settle-patent-lawsuits/