#21891
How do I insert a watermark in a PDF document?
Becker, Edward. PDFzone (2003). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright>Adobe Acrobat
#27124
Anticircumvention Rules: Threat to Science
Scientists who study encryption or computer security or otherwise reverse engineer technical measures, who make tools enabling them to do this work, and who report the results of their research face new risks of legal liability because of recently adopted rules prohibiting the circumvention of technical measures and manufacture or distribution of circumvention tools. Because all data in digital form can be technically protected, the impact of these rules goes far beyond encryption and computer security research. The scientific community must recognize the harms these rules pose and provide guidance about how to improve the anticircumvention rules.
Samuelson, Pamela. Science (2001). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright
#18892
Applying Copyleft To Non-Software Information
Copyleft contains the normal copyright statement, asserting ownership and identification of the author. However, it then gives away some of the other rights implicit in the normal copyright: it says that not only are you free to redistribute this work, but you are also free to change the work. However, you cannot claim to have written the original work, nor can you claim that these changes were created by someone else. Finally, all derivative works must also be placed under these terms.
Stutz, Michael. GNU. Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright>Open Source
#18858
It's getting more tempting to infringe on copyright when creating presentations, thanks to many new scanning and duplicating technologies as well as proliferating Web content. But writers, designers, artists and copyright owners are becoming more aggressive, using new tactics and technologies to enforce their rights. If you don't know the rules, you could end up on the wrong side of a lawsuit.
Zielinski, Dave. 3M (2002). Presentations>Intellectual Property>Copyright
#10193
With the advent of powerful networked desktop computers and the World Wide Web, authors have for the first time acquired control of the technology for scholarly communication. That radical change prompts the question of how authors have in the past fared under copyright law, and how they might fare in the future. Anglo-American copyright law has always attempted to regulate the interests of three parties: the author, the publisher, and the public. Before there was a formal copyright law, royal patents granted to the Stationer's Company created printing monopolies and facilitated state censorship. The concerns of authors were hardly considered. The 1710 Statute of Anne, our first formal copyright law, left printers the dominant power in relations between printers and authors. What is most remarkable about the Statute of Anne is that the state's interest began to shift from censorship toward the creation of a public domain for intellectual property.
Bennett, Scott. Journal of Electronic Publishing (1999). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright>History
#10594
The Basics of U.S. Copyright Law 
Copyright law is one of the most important legal issues for any entrepreneur or successful business to understand. It provides authors, programmers artists and others with vital intellectual property protection for their creations. This article explains exactly what U.S. copyright law is and how it works.
#20054
Bearing the Burden: Small Firms and the Patent System 
The popular conception of the patent system is one of mad inventors with ludicrous inventions and equally absurd expectations that the product of their years of pottering in the garden shed will change the world. Precisely the same system is the bulwark of strategy in some of the world's most powerful companies, notoriously in the pharmaceutical industry, but now also in the world's IT industry. Can the one instrument serve such diverse purposes? Certainly those for whom the patent system is of critical strategic importance think so for they frequently declare that it benefits the independent inventor and the small firm. They insist that the patent system encourages the innovation of the weak as well as the strong, and that society is much the richer for this innovation. This article considers just who does benefit from the patent system and then turns to the other side of the coin, the costs of the patent system. Most discussion of the system seems not so much to deny the existence of costs as to ignore them. Yet, the costs would seem to be considerable and their distribution as uneven as that of the benefits. Those who reap most benefits from the patent system are not those who incur most costs, and while benefits are finely focussed, costs are much more widely distributed. The greatest cost of all would seem to be borne by society as a whole in terms of damage done to innovation, which is curious given that the fundamental purpose of the patent system is to encourage innovation for the benefit of society as a whole.
Macdonald, Stuart. JILT (2003). Articles>Intellectual Property>Patents
#20028
Beware: Generic Words Can Indeed Be Trademarked
In article by Sabra Chartrand in the New York Times (March 13, 1995), makes it clear that the name of electronic products — books, photos, music, and titles — can be a bone of contention. Did you know that the Microsoft Corporation owns the rights to use the word bookshelf as applied to any CD-ROM product? In 1991, the software giant trademarked the term to cover its collection of reference books, Microsoft Bookshelf.
Editorial Eye, The (2003). Articles>Intellectual Property>Trademark>Writing
#27095
A Brief History of US Fair Use
In our role as writing teachers, we’ve been asked to adopt 'post-modern practice' by releasing old-fashioned notions of single authorship and obsolete pedagogy that forbids plagiarism under a 'detect-and-punish' regime. Instead, we are to teach 'digital ethics' and Fair Use. But what exactly is 'Fair Use'? This is a doctrine we as writing teachers need to understand because while public figures such as Lawrence Lessig, Jessica Litman, and Siva Vaidhyanathan argue that the law needs to be changed, in the meantime we have classes to teach. Writing teachers increasingly teach writing on networked computers, and therefore our need to understand the basic doctrine of Fair Use is as great as our need to understand the rules of anti-plagiarism. This paper first reviews current US Copyright Law, and then briefly traces the concept of 'Fair Use' from its inception as 'fair abridgment' in 1700’s England to its current interpretation in US case law. US Copyright policy, the regime legally defining invention, imitation, compilation, and appropriation, is set through complex interactions between a variety of players. These influential interactions include the habits of writers. The tension between stakeholders who wish to share, and stakeholders who wish to contain and control information is viewed as a 'battle,' 'war,' and 'fight'. In this fight, the writing student and teacher thus become actors, willingly or not, determining how copyright operates. Because we as teachers are key players in the continual remediation of copyright policy, we should have a basic critical understanding of US Copyright Law and how Fair Use is situated within our copyright regime.
Rife, Martine Courant. Social Science Research Network (2006). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright>History
#29488
But There's Only So Many Ways to do Something, Right?
We're often victims of design piracy. Roughly once a week someone emails us with an anonymous tip that someone has ripped off our "UI look and feel" and is using it for their own site or their own app. It's amazing what people and businesses think they can get away with. We send the violators an email letting them know they can't take our work, our words, our code, or our design. 98% of the time the violators respond favorably and take the design down or alter it sufficiently that it's no longer recognizable as our design. 1% of the time it takes a few emails before they acquiesce. And 1% of the time it requires legal intervention.
Signal vs. Noise (2007). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright>Web Design
#31300
Buyer Beware: The Ever-Expanding Search for the Perfect Image
When you need to find an image for commercial use, how much consideration do you give to where it came from? Do you think about its provenance, its pedigree? Are the images you license sourced primarily from major distributors or from alternative suppliers, who may have access to more distinctive or original content?
Waterman, Jill. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Design>Graphic Design>Intellectual Property
#21042
Clearing Rights for Multimedia Works 
The ground-breaking aspects of undertaking to create a multimedia work are more than just technological; much as the technology is growing by leaps and bounds in response to the needs of creators and consumers, so also must the methods and techniques for transferring from owners to new creators the rights to utilize existing works. As this industry began to take on form and vision, much excited speculation and wonder quickly turned to disbelief, if not outright horror, as creators began to understand what a labyrinth 'clearing rights' would be.
Harper, Georgia K. University of Texas (2003). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright>Multimedia
#21718
On November, 2, 2002, the TEACH Act (Act) became law, fully revising Section 110(2) of the U.S. Copyright Act, governing lawful uses of works protected by copyright in distance education. By complying with the TEACH Act, certain copyrighted works may be used for distance education without permission from, or payment of royalties to, the copyright owner—and without copyright infringement.
Indiana University (2003). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright>Education
#27119
The Constitutional Law of Intellectual Property After Eldred v. Ashcroft 
The past decade has witnessed an extraordinary blossoming of scholarship on the constitutional law of intellectual property, much of which focuses on copyright law. This article suggests that the scholarly debate will and should continue and that the proponents of constitutional limits are likely to enjoy some successes in the future, even if they did not do so in the Eldred case itself.
Samuelson, Pamela. University of California Berkeley (2003). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright>Case Studies
#20780
Copyfight: The Politics of Intellectual Property
Explores the nexus of legal rulings, Capitol Hill policy-making, technical standards development and technological innovation that creates--and will recreate--the networked world as we know it.
#19442
Copyright and Persons with Print Disabilities in the Digital Age
The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) stands squarely in favor of reasonable and prudent technologies to assist in ensuring that copyright holders are fairly compensated for the sale, or other forms of digital access, of the content they publish in digital formats. However,most proposals we have seen to date purporting to establish technologies to prevent illegal copying or publication of copyrighted content simply do not consider, or address in any way, the fair use rights of persons who are blind and visually impaired. We would regard it a serious breach of faith with disabled persons to establish new technologies and copyright provisions which, once again, regard our needs as peripheral and expendable. To this end we offer the following positions on this issue of fundamental importance to this community.
American Foundation for the Blind (2002). Articles>Intellectual Property>Accessibility>Visual
#13307
As original content takes on new forms in the rapidly developing and ever-changing digital publishing environment, copyright issues become increasingly important. Publishers that work with those authors who choose to link the information from their printed books to web pages can ensure that copyright violations do not occur.
Lemiski, Karen J. STC Proceedings (2000). Presentations>Intellectual Property>Copyright>Online
#13634
Copyright and Trademark Resources
A collection of copyright and trademark resources for professionals in new media design.
#19535
A Copyright Cold War? The Polarized Rhetoric of the Peer-to-Peer Debates
Participants in the United States’ ongoing debates over peer-to-peer transfers of potentially copyrighted files have regularly trafficked in the rhetoric of warfare. While it is easy to understand how copyright holders would view peer-to-peer file transfers as a kind of attack, the rhetorical turn toward the discourse of military conflict has radiated throughout the debate. Individuals from across the spectrum of opinions on peer-to-peer file transfers both accept and reproduce the positioning of this public policy debate as a life-or-death struggle. The weaknesses of this comparison are illustrated through reference to the history of the Cold War, often cited as a model for the post-Napster period. Further, the relative immaturity of the peer-to-peer debate is demonstrated through reference to rhetorical analysis techniques suggested by stasis theory. This article concludes by suggesting ways in which the currently stalemated debate might be revitalized by principled interventions from scholars and concerned citizens.
Logie, John. First Monday (2003). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright
#28155
Copyright is extremely important in our economy today. Intellectual property fuels our economy to a great extent: 1/3 of the market of US stock, and 42% of gross domestic product. A copyright protects authorship, either now known or later developed. There are fundamental concepts of copyright: it needs to be in a tangible form and it needs to be eligible.
Kinder, Meredith. Carolina Communique (2006). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright
#27133
The Clinton administration, through its white paper on intellectual property, is proposing a wholesale giveaway to its supporters in the copyright industry--at your expense.
Samuelson, Pamela. Wired (1996). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright
#25271
Copyright in the Twenty-First Century: The Exclusive Right to Read
The hottest of hot topics in the copyright community these days is the information superhighway, officially dubbed the National Information infrastructure.
Litman, Jessica. Cardozo Arts and Entertainment Law Journal (1994). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright
#13699
A PowerPoint presentation on recent developments in intellectual property law, and their cultural significance to content producers and consumers.
Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. Clarkson University (2001). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright
#21717
Learn basic copyright information quickly.
Indiana University. Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright
#21715
A collection of links to high-quality intellectual property websites that focus on copyright.
Stanford University. Resources>Intellectual Property>Copyright
