Ethical and Moral Issues regarding Intellectual Property - Research Paper Example

Ethical and Moral Issues regarding Intellectual Property Introduction   Most high-tech industries are distinguished by their intellectual properties and these are highly important for them in relation to their brand, research, innovation and discovery of new processes and products. But, a major challenge they face is to protect intellectual property as it has become a growing trend that small-baby fake companies in other countries more often counterfeit world-class brands, copyrights, patents and they market their creations under these intellectual properties. Though most countries and worldwide authorities have developed IP protection laws to help these companies protect their properties, there remain significant legal and ethical issues in relation to the IP protection between companies and between countries. This piece of research paper addresses the ethical and moral issues regarding the intellectual ownership and copyright. Ethical and moral issues regarding intellectual ownership Ethics, corporate social responsibility and morality have got significant importance in business in recent years. Businesses are expected to be ethical, moral and socially responsible and thus they are expected not to counterfeit, copy and steal intellectual properties of other businesses. Intellectual property, as Credo Reference noted, is equivalent to the physical form of private property that people are allowed to own aspects of their mental creativity and innovation, images, inventions, literary and artistic works and therefore these can be traded as commodities and thus an individual or company can apply for an idea to be registered as their own property. There has been significant debate about the ownership of the intellectual property, but as per the definition given below, intellectual property is the right of an individual or company that invented or discovered it. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization of the United Nations, Intellectual Property is defined as “the rights to, among other things, the result of intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary or artistic field: (Duquenoy, Jones and Blundell, 2008, 58). Who first own an intellectual property, who is entitled to granting the right and who has right to transfer it contractually are some of the concerns regarding the ownership of the intellectual properties. However, when an intellectual property like patent, royalty etc have been registered with an authority, it becomes the right of a person or firm to whim it has been registered. As Freeman and Peace (2005) noted, once the ownership has been acquired, it doesn’t end except by destruction of the material thing or incorporation to another. The ownership of intellectual property is always temporal because it is restricted in time and some point coming to an end and therefore legally, ethically and morally the ownership falls within the public domain. Maughan (2004) emphasized that the ownership of the intellectual property, though technically the highest estate, is not absolute ownership, and therefore ethically the rights of the owner are socially circumscribed in many different ways for many reasons and this may be curtailed at any time. Ethical and moral issues regarding Copyright ownership A copyright is legal form of protection that is afforded to an original work of art or authorship that has been developed in to a physical and tangible form (Ward, 2007, 1). A copyright is initially owned by a creative author or authors from his or their works. But according to the law, a person doesn’t necessarily needs to create the work to be its author for the copyright purposes (Irving, 2011). A very common example is the creation of employees who work under an employer. The creation and authorship of these employees will later become the copyright of the employer. In this case, the employer legally will be regarded to be the owner and therefore he gains the copyright. There are more or less chances of arising ethical and legal issues between employer and employees especially in relation to claiming the copyright for the work. Though Law allows an employer to be the owner of works of the employees, some circumstances may cause employees to claim copyright for the work they did. Copyright protection is granted, for instance in the US, by Federal Law to the original works of the authorship fixed in tangible form. The original owner or employer to whom employees work with writing and authorship can register copyright for the ownership of a) literary works, b) musical works, including any accompanying words, c) dramatic works, with all accompanying words, d) pantomimes and choreographic, e) motion pictures and any other audio-visual creations, f) sound recordings, and g) architectural workings (Sandeen, 2007). In the field of literary works, plagiarism has been one of the significant ethical and moral issues that many authors experienced in recent days. Due to the widespread use of internet and web-materials for writing and other purposes, many writers have knowingly and unknowingly copy literatures from others work, without proper referencing and this in turn has created significant legal and ethical issues of copyrights. Conclusion Intellectual property protection has become a challenge on most of the businesses. Though there are legal restrictions, some small businesses have been found to counterfeit others intellectual properties and this has raised significant legal and ethical issues. This piece of paper has highlighted the legal and ethical issues in relation to the ownership of intellectual properties and copyrights. References Duquenoy, Penny, Jones, Simon & Blundell, Barry G 2008, Ethical, Legal and Professional Issues in Computing, Illustrated edition, Cengage Learning EMEA Freeman, Lee & Peace, A. Graham 2005, Information ethics: privacy and intellectual property, Illustrated edition, Idea Group Inc (IGI) Irving, Shae 2011, Nolo's Encyclopedia of Everyday Law: Answers to Your Most Frequently Asked Legal Questions, Eights revised edition, Nolo Maughan, CW 2004, Property and Intellectual Property: Foundations in Law and Economics, Prometheus, Carfax Publishing, Taylor & Francis, Sandeen, Sharon K, 2007, Intellectual property deskbook for the business lawyer: a transactions-based guide to intellectual property law, American Bar Association The Anti-Capitalist Dictionary. London: Zed Books, 2006. s.v. Intellectual Property, http://www.credoreference.com/entry/zedacd/intellectual_property (accessed March 27, 2011). Ward, Francine, 2007, Staying legal: a guide to copyright and trademark use, American Society for Training and Development Read More