A couple of days ago I went to a talk on Intellectual Property Rights in Projects organised by the BCS. The speaker, Dai Davis was very entertaining and I’m glad to say I learnt quite a bit about this fascinating subject. I used Twitter to take notes from the event, and I thought I’d share them here for my readers to pick some interesting facts:
Consultant retains copyright of what he creates even if someone paid him to do it
Copyright – if an employee writes something – employer has copyright – if a consultant writes something, it’s NOT the client
Patents protect ideas – Copyright protects the manifestation of an idea – #bcsiom_ip
Most software doesn’t get patented .. it’s already protected by copyright –
There’s no such thing as a “World-wide patent” – Patents are territorial – #bcsiom_ip
3 criteria for a patent: has to be new, has to involve inventive step, capable of industrial application – #bcsiom_ip
Intellectual Property is all about monopoly (countered by anti-monopoly law (anti-trust/competition law))
Organisation that manages IP internationally: WIPO – http://www.wipo.int – #bcsiom_ip
(yup, they are in reverse order)