Reminders
- Reminder that final report will be one pdf not four separate ones
- Reminder you will be giving formal presentations during class time on December 3 and 6, at 11:10, in this room
Tips for Stage3 from samples of Stage2
- In most cases they are not coordinated at all with each other
- In some cases they outright contradict each other
- In other cases the same information appears in detail in two places
- Include more evidence!! e.g. “Our target market is people with young children”. (Because? What do you base that on?)
- Remember the ChatGPT policy!
- You cannot put a chatgpt generated screen design into your proposal!
- Generalization: tighten up your writing. I know “If I had more time I could have made it shorter”.
- Beware of restating the same thing or saying in 20 words what you could say in 10
- Try to keep paragraphs below ~200 words (this is not a rule)
- Check your pdf before submitting! It may have rendered funny
Intellectual Property (“IP”)
- “What is your protectable intellectual property?”
- “How will you stop Microsoft from just ripping off your product?”
What is IP?
- Many definitions (as usual) (See (as usual) Wikipedia )
- Different in different countries.
Discussion: What do you think of when you hear the term `intellectual property`? Is it sensible that we can own an idea like we can own a pair of shoes?
Intellectual Property
“Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The most well-known types are copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets…(from wikipedia)
Features of IP
- “Intangible?”
- “Property?”
- “Human Intellect?”
USA: Mechanisms to IP?
- Copyright
- Trade Secret
- Patents
- Licenses (not exactly in the same category)
- Trademarks (not exactly in the same category)
What benefits do you get if you have IP rights?
- Impresses investors!
- Patent portfolios
- Competitive protection
Patent:
Wikipedia: “A patent (/ˈpætənt/ or /ˈpeɪtənt/) is a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time, in exchange for the public disclosure of the invention. An invention is a solution to a specific technological problem, and may be a product or a process.[1]:17 Patents are a form of intellectual property.”
A patent:
- is expensive to prepare
- needs lawyers
- may or may not be granted
- will be expensive to ‘defend’
Trade Secret
Wikipedia: The precise language by which a trade secret is defined varies by jurisdiction (as do the particular types of information that are subject to trade secret protection). However, there are three factors that, although subject to differing interpretations, are common to all such definitions.
- is not generally known to the public;
- confers some sort of economic benefit on its holder (where this benefit must derive specifically from its not being generally known, not just from the value of the information itself);
- is the subject of reasonable efforts to maintain its secrecy.
A trade secret:
- is inherently present, simply by keeping a secret
- secret has to be truly unique not common sense or widely known
- needs to be managed with appropriate “NDA”
- is more defensible if properly kept secret
Copyright:
Wikipedia: Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time. Generally, it is “the right to copy”, but also gives the copyright holder the right to be credited for the work, to determine who may adapt the work to other forms, who may perform the work, who may financially benefit from it, and other related rights.
A Copyright is:
- again is inherently present, by being the author of something
- can apply to many kinds of ‘work’, text, images, videos, user interfaces
- more difficult to defend as you go down the list
Protecting your IP and respecting others’ IP
- Licensing is a contract between two parties where I allow you to ‘use’ something that I own
- You need to decide what you ‘release’ and what you don’t. For example, do you release source code? Do you release your circuit diagrams, and so on. Whatever you ‘release’ you have to ‘protect’
- Two steps:
- First, make it protected, so you own it
- Second, grant someone else permission to use it in a controlled way, by licensing it
NDA
- Non disclosure agreement
- Entered in before a meeting where you will hear or tell secrets
- Required to preserve “trade secret” status
- FrieNDA
Open Source and Creative Commons
Thank you. Questions?
(random Image from picsum.photos)