Protection of Intellectual Property

Protection of Intellectual Property

Intellectual property is any form of an idea that originates from a person or company and used to create innovative products, or services. Theft of these ideas by foreign entities to produce similar knock off goods has had a negative effect to both the owners of the idea and economy as a whole.

The United States Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) have taken a number of steps to fight against intellectual property theft. According to their websites, they both run complex investigations on cases that arise from theft of intellectual property. Since intellectual property includes copyright, patents, proprietary products, trade secrets and internet protocols, the two offices have contingencies that are there to resolve unique legal and investigative issues being raised by telecommunication technology. They also, according to their websites have the mandate to pursue local and international cases that relate to theft of intellectual property.

The United States government has already put in place several initiatives to combat the theft of intellectual property. According to Johnson & Walworth (2009), the government engages in diplomatic ties with foreign countries especially China and Russia for the trade of intellectual property rights. There is the continued investigation and prosecutions of persons and entities that find the trade of, or pirating of proprietary products including software and designs. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also conducts awareness campaigns to the threats, and punishment of those who are guilty of intellectual property rights violation (Qui & Yu, 2010).

As Johnson and Walworth (2009) assert, the government can further combat this problem by changing their approach. Technical innovation, which will put physical and technological barriers to intellectual property workers from unauthorized access, can still be pursued. A further legislative approach can be taken by making other nations sign treaties such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaty and the Digital Millennium Act of 1998. The treaties bind all the nations to uphold and respect the intellectual property of other nations. Trade agreements can be signed with other nations, which instead of resorting to theft; they can export their ideas and in the process increase foreign direct investment (Qui & Yu, 2010).

Question 2.

Increase in the cases of theft in the United States by other states like China and Japan has led to flooding of the market by knock off and counterfeit goods and products. This according to a research by Qui and Yu (2010) has brought about massive losses to business revenue, hence influencing the economy. To combat these, several actions need to be taken to prevent intellectual property theft. The federal government agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) should participate in the process. NW3C (2010) states that there is the need to increase civil and criminal penalties for trademark and copyright infringement by other agencies, persons and nations. This is further strengthened by the enactment by Congress of Resources and Organization Intellectual Property Act 2008. The federal agencies can also enact to the letter the Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement, which operates as law from June 2010. This act addresses both the local and foreign infringement and the steps are taken to ensure that the menace reduces. The act also ensure that state agencies in the United States purchase genuine merchandise from both local and international markets to help curb this menace (Johnson & Walworth, 2009; NW3C, 2010).

The Joint Strategic Plan also ensures that there is transparency between all the government agencies in their operations, the private sector and their relations with international markets and countries. It dictates the terms of trade between them and hence encourages efficiency and supports law enforcement efforts to combat the intellectual property theft.

Question 3.

A number of strategies can be enacted to protect a business from the intellectual property theft which is on the rise in the United States. For the protection of intellectual proprietary software and patents, a number of information security restrictions are in place (NW3C, 2010; Johnson & Walworth, 2009). These security measures include the inclusion of digital certificates in the software, which must be verified as genuine by the user before installation or use. There is also the use of unique codes and keys that are only present in the supply of the software. This code is present in the physical packaging thus; it is unique for each software. This makes use of the software to be limited to only one user. There is use of encryption and codes language that only the owner of the software can modify. This makes the theft of the programming language or code to make other similar software impossible.

The business shall also provide open access software and trial versions to be used by the general public, and ensure that they get to use the software and be encouraged to purchase the original software to enjoy the full capabilities. To fight off foreign entities the business shall outsource the design of the software to other software manufacturers at a cost; hence work collaboratively with them to discourage theft (NW3C, 2010).

Question 4.

In light of increased intellectual property theft, the United States department of justice has prosecuted a number of cases related to the same. On April 3, 2012, Jeffery J. Reichert was convicted of manufacturing modification chips to be sold for financial gain to the public. These chips are designed to circumvent the technological measures programmed to restrict access to copyrighted software. The software affected in this case was the video game software such as Nintendo wii, in which the person could skip the security measures and use a pirated or unregistered version of the software.

The impact of this theft means that users could buy just one copy of the software and distribute it to others to use as the original version. This would have brought about massive revenue losses to the Software Company, and cause a cease in operations. For the company to protect itself from future losses, they need to use more encrypted codes in the software, to protect it from future attacks of the same magnitude. They also need to restrict access to their servers and instead of using networks; they should store their work remotely to restrict access.