Abstract
Intellectual property is important to our daily lives. Intellectual property is the name commonly given to a group of separate intangible property right. These include trademarks patents, copyright, designs, plant varieties and layout design of integrated circuits. Intellectual property is important to our daily lives like the brand-names logos on clothes like T-shirts, articles in the newspaper, TV programmers, pop songs, cinema films movies and fashion design all have a strong connection with intellectual property.
In light of studying Associate Degree program in Lingnan and we have to do many projects in school years, it is necessary to find information from websites, books, journals, newspaper or articles. However, we are easily involved ourselves in plagiarism and copyright infringement. We need to have the knowledge on Intellectual Property so that we can use information legally and correctly.
Piracy problem of software has raised much concern recently. We watched a video related to piracy problem when attending the Information Literacy class. In the video, a company complained that they could not get profit on the production of software because of the effect of active piracy activities.
Hence, in this project, we selected the topic related to Intellectual Property to introduce the basic information on it to classmates. In addition, to share our opinion on Intellectual Property is also our main purpose. The main things we are focus on is the education. Because we think that education is the most important point. Teaching the younger on the right way for how to use the information decently, and be more responsible or so on. We hope that if the government and citizen can cooperate together to attack the faked or plagiarize, that will be more of good produce write.
Chapter 1 Introduction
Intellectual Property infringement means that someone’s ideas were plagiarized by others without his permission.
In our observation, the problem of Intellectual Property infringement concentrates on software and photocopying. Mong Kok and Shum Shui Po are famous of selling piracy products, such as CDs and DVDs. The piracy producer made copy from the original version of software and then sold it at a cheap price. People preferred the cheap version to expensive version. Hence, many software and programme companies complained that it was too difficult to develop their business in the light of piracy activities.
For the problem of photocopying, the photocopy shops got great profit from photocopying. Especially, many students required them to make copy from text book in order to save money. The publishers also had difficulties for business development as nobody like buying expensive text books.
Concerning the above problem of copyright infringement, the government established the Intellectual Property Department on 2 July 1990. The obligation of this department is to deal with the affairs of Trade Marks, Patents, Registered Designs and Copyright Licensing Bodies Registries. They also imposed policies and legislation to protect intellectual property. To enhance awareness of Intellectual Property is also their aim.
Chapter 2
2.1 Definition of Intellectual Property
Namely, Intellectual Property right is given to person to accept the possession of their creative works.
Intellectual Property can be defined as industrial property or copyright. Industrial property includes the following objects: invention (patent), trademark, industrial design and geographic indication of source. Copyright includes literary and artistic works, such as novel, poem, film, musical works; artistic works such as drawing, painting, photograph, sculpture and architectural design.
Basically, Intellectual Property protects the knowledge which is thought by somebody. For example, a company applies for trademark and patent in order to prevent the knowledge of their products from being plagiarized under Intellectual Property law. The brand-name logo on a T-shirt, an article in newspaper, TV programme, song, movie are also protected by Intellectual Property.
What is trademark?
A trademark is a distinctive sign, which identifies certain goods or services. It’s very useful to keep customers up and provides the protection to the owner and to ensure the exclusive right to use it to identify the goods and services. It can grantee the quality of products and provides a strong impression to the customers. Besides, customers can easily to identify the brand name of the products.
What is invention (patent)?
Patent protection means that the invention cannot be commercially made, used, distributed or sold without the patent owner's consent. The patent owner may give permission or license, to other parties to use the invention on mutually agreed terms. It encourages individual’s creativity and innovations.
What is industrial design?
An industrial design is the ornament aspect of an article. This means that an industrial design is primarily of an aesthetic nature and does not protect any technical features of the article to which it is applied. Industrial designs make a product attractive and appealing from customer so they add to the commercial value of a product and one think is increase the product in market.
2.2) Case studies on Intellectual Property
(2.2.1) Case from King’s Glory Educational Centre
The customs arrested one examinee because he sold lecture notes and pirated CD related to lecture on Internet without consent. He spent a year time to do the sound recording in 100 lessons.
The price of those pirated products are around $ 200 to $450. The educational centre confirmed that those goods (notes disc) are illegal, because students are not permitted to make copy of the lecture as well as sell the lecture notes.
The suspect (examinee) would charge by the custom because he sold those copyright goods. The penalty is imprisoned for four years and each goods fines $50 thousand dollars.
The customs reminded us that any recording without copyright possessor’s consent is involved law infringement, but the copyright possessor may follow the civil way to hold the responsible.
(2.2.2) Illegal photocopying services
The Custom and Excise Department has raided three photocopy shops in the past 2 months to crack down on illegal photocopying services. They seized 971 illegally copied books and 61 photocopy machines estimated at $610,000 from 19 shops. The Custom and Excise Department spokesperson reminded citizen that anyone who replicate or sell books/literature (including textbooks) without copyrights is against the law and will be prosecuted.
(2.2.3) Copyright infringement of design
A website called “Perfect 10” sold naked female photos on internet. They accused searching engine “Google.com” of copyright infringement. “Google.com” provided the password to enter the website of “Perfect 10” and provided the female photo for the customer without payment. “Perfect 10” request the searching website “google.com”’ to compensate for their loss.
2.3) The reasons for or against Intellectual Property (Pros & Cons)
2.3.1) Significant and positive effects of Intellectual Property
Intellectual Property help moderate the problem of tort. Customs officer had been working hard to crack down on the piracy activities. For example, they joined hand to the Internet Service Providers such as ‘Yahoo’ to investigate whether people make and sell pirated products on the internet. They also patrolled some software stores regularly to see if people sell the pirated software.
According to the penalty for offence, people are required to pay a large amount of money per infringing copy and being imprisoned for 4 years. Such serious punishment can discourage people from taking part in the piracy activities. People involve themselves in copyright infringement at the expense of their money and freedom.
Moreover, the licensing agreement gives convenience for people to use software legally and economically. For example, people can install the software on only one computer and make one back-up copy under the single-user licensing agreement. The software vendors also provide companies the special discount pricing if they buy more copies of a program. It encourages people to use the original products rather than the pirated version.
Intellectual Property is favourable for commercial development. Companies can apply for trademark, patent or industrial design to control the manufacture of products. Under the Intellectual Property laws, the ideas of products can not be plagiarized and imitated without consent. Enterprisers who want to participate in the manufacture should get permission from authority.
Intellectual Property encourage the development of creative industry. We can define ‘Creative industry’ as self creativity, competence and talent. The main occupation of this industry includes advertising, architecture, fashion design, film, software, music, cartoon production, publisher. All intellectual objects, such as artistic works, films, musical works, drawings, paintings, photographs or architectural designs are given the protection. It can make the creators or designers to enjoy their works
Intellectual Property is also favourable for academic development. The efforts of writers, artists, designers, software programmers, inventors and other talents are no longer disregarded and wasted. They will continue their works more studiously. Authorship law gives credit for intellectual works and give highly specialized roles to the authors and experts. It motivates them to do the best on their study.
Meanwhile, Intellectual Property laws discourage the plagiarism atmosphere. Either experts, professors and students are required to indicate the sources of information clearly if they want to quote some statements or use the ideas directly from the books. In the University campus, students will be punished for the plagiarism behaviour. They should analyze what the writers implied and then make conclusion from the information. Then, our thinking skill can be improved.
(2.3.2) The difficulties and disadvantages of Intellectual Property
The difficulties in enforcing the Intellectual Property laws are as follow. Firstly, the Customs officers are difficult to inspect every people whether they possess copyright-infringing products because of the insufficient manpower. People who are checked with copyright-infringing products or works can justify with educational purpose. Because people are given certain allowance to make copy from copyright works for education. They can also make back-up copy from original software. Hence, the department are difficult to charge people of copyright infringement.
Sometimes, people who sell pirated software would place their fakes secretly rather than show them obviously. They provide a box for payment and deliver the fakes efficiently. Although the authority can raid the warehouses where pirated products stored, ‘look-outs’ are employed to see whether department officers come. Hence, it is difficult for them to find evidence for those piracy activities.
In addition, Intellectual Property bring many inconveniences. For students, they are limited to photocopy more then 2 % of the number of pages of a book at the same time. On doing project, students are required to indicate all the sources of information or citation text clearly. There are serious consequence if they plagiarize from information directly.
For teachers, they can only make limited amount of copy for the course materials. Those copies can only be made and used for one course. They cannot infringe the principle that one copy per student in a course. The copies should also be short and brief. Teachers who want to copy information from poems, stories, essays or musical works should follow the quantity instruction.
Under the Intellectual Property law, photocopy shops are difficult to operate. They are afraid of being accused of copyright infringement. The HK photocopy association suggested that people should pay four cents for each page of copy and some of the money should be given out for copyright fee. Furthermore, the customs officer usually inspect the shops and this action will increase pressure on photocopy shops.
2.4) Suggestion
(2.4.1) How to enhance the awareness of Intellectual Property?
Intellectual Property can be promoted by advertisement. For the content of advertisement, a brief explanation of Intellectual Property should be included. Also, the consequence of Intellectual Property infringement should be explained to discourage people from doing so. Some people doubted the possibility of short TV commercial. They thought that there are not enough time to give out details of Intellectual Property for audience.
However, only the main point of Intellectual Property and the penalty are necessary to describe. The purpose of advertisement is to provide information of Intellectual Property for audience in a short time. In order to make audience easily understand the concept, advertisement should be presented in simple language.
Moreover, Intellectual Property can be promoted by education reform. The society are emphasizing on General Study nowadays. The topic of Intellectual Property should be added in Secondary curriculum so that students learn the basic concept of Intellectual Property. It is also useful for them to do project in the future.
(2.4.2) What can the government do to protect Intellectual Property?
Firstly, the customs officers should raid the shops where copyright-infringing products are sold more frequently. Besides, government should do the best to promote Intellectual Property. They can join hand to publishers, TV buildings or radio station to advertise Intellectual Property.
Some people would suggest that higher penalties should be imposed. However, people who infringe copyright law will be fined $50000 per infringing copy and imprison 4 years, according to ordinance. What’s really important is to instill the concept that copyright-infringement is immoral.
Furthermore, government can promote the license agreement so that people who want to use original software economically but they have no idea on that can get more information on that.
Finally, the government should join hand to school to hold creativity competition. The winner should be rewarded in order to encourage creativity. Students who participated in the competition will discover the importance of Intellectual Property. They will have the concept that their ideas are valuable and their works should be prohibited from being plagiarized.
Chapter 3 Methodology
3.1) Project design
The content of this study divides into 5 parts: definition of IP, case study, relevant department, pros and cons, suggestion. We hope to have a comprehensive and detailed analysis of IP rather than report the ordinance only.
3.2) Project method
n Work allocation
In order to finish the project effectively and efficiently, every member of our group were responsible for at least one to two parts. We found information in our own and then shared them in the meeting. We mentioned the problem we encountered in the meeting and work out solution together.
n Time management
At the beginning of our project, we set ‘To do list’ to list out the tasks so that we can concentrate to complete them one by one. We also set decline for each tasks so that we handed in the works without delay.
n Information collection
In this project, we mainly used the information on the internet. We found the definition and details of IP at government website. The example cases were found at news website. Moreover, we selected some academic articles from Lingnan library E-Resources for reference. However, we found that many information were not suitable to our points of view. We decided to use factual details and real life examples in support of the pros and cons.
3.3) Type of Information & Evaluation
In this project, we mainly used the information from government website and news website. When we were evaluating those information, we considered the following areas.
(1) For government website
We mainly considered the reliability, timeliness and relevance
n Reliability and Timeliness
Government Departments are in charge for providing information on their website. They have to update information if policies are changed. They should make sure the information provided on website are correct and real.
n Relevance
The purpose of government website is to give public the correct and latest information of their policy. For experience, in Intellectual Property Department’s website, we found many useful information for definition of Intellectual Property.
n Quality
Firstly, The content of government website were clearly explained and organized. Besides, the writing style of their website is clear and understandable for public. They should make sure that public will understand the policies after browsing the website.
(2) For News website
We mainly considered the reliability and relevance
The purpose of News website is to provide daily news for public. Besides, they give helping hand for people to search information for their project. Also, the News websites are not only provided for target readers. Every people have the chance to browse it on the internet. Moreover, the information of News website are written by simple language and the editors avoided using highly technical vocabulary so that the public can read the content easily. Finally, the content of news websites should be a factual report of real life affairs. The publisher will be complained if their information are not the truth.
Chapter 4 Presentation result and Analysis
(4.1) Oral presentation
In order to maintained a good time management, we only presented six parts: concept and content of IP, Pros and Cons, example related to IP and suggestion. The most satisfactory we felt in that we finished all sections within the time limited. Also, every member in our group had the chance to present their ideas.
For the content of presentation, we didn’t emphasize too much on what is Intellectual Property because we thought most of us would understand the concept when attending classes. We tried to analyze the significance, importance, effects, advantages and disadvantages of Intellectual Property.
(4.2) Answering question
In this section, we understand the main points of the questions. However, our answering question skills were not enough. Although we didn’t perform well in the question and answer section, we collected the ideas for writing report.
Chapter 5 Conclusion
To conclude, Intellectual Property is the right given to inventors to protect their works. Intellectual Property has relationships among copyright, invention (patent), trademark, industrial design and geographic indication of source. Under the IP laws, the inventors, creators, artists, experts or authorship can protect their works; companies can prevent their products from being plagiarized. Although some people had been still taking part in piracy activities, the piracy atmosphere had been discouraged. People can have discount if they use more copies of software under the license agreement. Admittedly, the Intellectual Property in Hong Kong still has incompleteness. However, Intellectual Property will be workable if government consider the problem more specifically and then take immediate action for improvement.
