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Intellectual Property
"The law protects the results of the individual?s ingenuity and inventiveness" (Doolan, 1999, p. 429). Intellectual property legislation protects copyrighted works, patented designs, trademarks and passing off original work as ones own. The argument for protecting Intellectual Property is a two sided one firstly to protect the right holders (owners) right to exploit the commercial value of their "ingenuity and inventiveness", thus providing a encouragement for the creation of many intellectual works such as: literary works including computer programs, audiovisual works, and databases. Secondly the benefit of having this new work added to the human knowledge pool and the economy is unquantifiable.
Passing Off is an economic tort (wrong) in law, one that involves "unfair competition whereby one party, by using deception, attempts to obtain the economic benefits of the reputation which another has established" (Doolan, 1999, p 216).
Great care should be taken when using any protected property, i.e. copyright, patents and trademarks on the Internet as this enjoys the same protection as offline.
Under the current EU directive on "copyright and related rights", rights were extended to include the information society. This directive is for the purpose of harmonisation of some parts of copyright and related rights. This is due for implementation before 22 December 2002.
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