Quick Quiz 2
1. The term _____ refers to the existing body of knowledge available to a person of ordinary
skill in the art.
2. A(n) _____ is a firm that acquires patents with no intention of manufacturing anything,
instead licensing the patents to others.
3. A(n) _____ prohibits an employee from working for any competitors for a period of time,
often one to two years.
4. _____ is the use of illegal means to obtain business information not available to the general
public.
V. Key Intellectual Property Issues
1. Use this section to discuss issues that apply to intellectual property and information
technology, including plagiarism, reverse engineering, open source code, competitive
intelligence, trademark infringement, and cybersquatting.
A. Plagiarism
1. Plagiarism is the act of stealing someone’s ideas or words and passing them off as one’s
own. Note that the explosion of electronic content and the growth of the Web have made
it easy to cut and paste paragraphs into term papers and other documents without proper
citation or quotation marks.
2. Point out that plagiarism detection services and software (see Table 6-3) allow teachers,
B. Reverse Engineering
1. Reverse engineering is the process of taking something apart in order to understand it,
build a copy of it, or improve it. Explain that it was originally applied to computer
hardware but is now commonly applied to software as well.
2. Note that one frequent use of reverse engineering for software is to modify an application
that ran on one vendor’s database so that it can run on another’s (for example, from
Access to Oracle).
3. Introduce the terms compilers and decompilers.
Teaching
Tip
Take time to discuss whether allowing reverse engineering to enable
interoperability stifles a company’s ability to protect its software and hardware.
C. Open Source Code
1. Open source code is any program whose source code is made available for use or
modification, as users or other developers see fit. Explain that the basic premise behind
D. Competitive Intelligence
1. An effective competitive intelligence operation requires the continual gathering, analysis,
and evaluation of data with controlled dissemination of useful information to decision
makers. Note that competitive intelligence is often integrated into a company’s strategic
plan and decision making.
2. Introduce the term industrial espionage.
3. Briefly discuss the legitimate sources of data used for competitive intelligence.
Teaching
Tip
Emphasize the difference between ethical competitive intelligence gathering
and unethical competitive intelligence gathering.
4. Competitive intelligence analysts must avoid unethical or illegal actions, such as lying,
misrepresentation, theft, bribery, or eavesdropping with illegal devices. Table 6-5
provides a manager’s checklist for running an ethical competitive intelligence operation.
E. Trademark Infringement
1. A trademark is a logo, package design, phrase, sound, or word that enables a consumer
to differentiate one company’s products from another’s. Explain that consumers often
cannot examine goods or services to determine their quality or source, so instead they
rely on the labels attached to the products.
F. Cybersquatting
1. Explain that when Web sites were first established, there was no procedure for validating
the legitimacy of requests for Web site names, which were given out on a first-come,
first-served basis. Cybersquatters registered domain names for famous trademarks or
company names to which they had no connection, with the hope that the trademark’s
owner would eventually buy the domain name for a large sum of money.
2. Point out that the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), enacted in 1999,
allows trademark owners to challenge foreign cybersquatters who might otherwise be
beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.
Quick Quiz 3
1. _____ is the use of illegal means to obtain business information not available to the general
public.
2. A(n) _____ is a language translator that converts computer program statements expressed in
a source language (such as Java, C , C++, and COBOL) into machine language (a series of
binary codes of 0s and 1s) that the computer can execute.
3. The _____ is a nonprofit corporation responsible for managing the Internet’s domain name
system.
4. The _____ is intended to protect GNU software from being made proprietary, and it lists
terms and conditions for copying, modifying, and distributing free software.
Discussion Questions
1. How might definitions of plagiarism vary across cultures?
2. Improvised speech is not eligible for copyright. What about a piece of music in which large
sections are improvised?
3. Given that there is no money to be made from open source code, why would a developer
release software under an open source license?
Additional Projects
1. Develop a competitive intelligence gathering policy that specifies what an ethical
intelligence gathering strategy is, and what is unethical.
2. Write an essay about the history and benefits of the Open Source movement.
3. Write an essay about the advantages and disadvantages of the practice of cross-licensing,
including the repercussions for smaller businesses.
Additional Resources
Key Terms
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)—an
agreement of the World Trade Organization that requires member governments to ensure
that intellectual property rights can be enforced under their laws and that penalties for
infringement are tough enough to deter further violations.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)—an act that implements two WIPO treaties
in the United States. It also makes it illegal to circumvent a technical protection or develop
and provide tools that allow others to access a technologically protected work. It also limits
the liability of online service providers for copyright infringement by their subscribers or
customers.
Economic Espionage Act (EEA) of 1996—imposes penalties of up to $10 million and
15 years in prison for the theft of trade secrets
Fair use doctrine—established factors for courts to consider whether a particular use of
copyrighted material is fair and can be allowed without penalty
Industrial espionage—the gathering of information not available to the public through
illegal means
Intellectual property—a term used to describe works of the mind, such as art, books,
films, formulas, inventions, music, and processes, that are distinct and “owned” or created
by a single person or group
Leahy-Smith America Invents Act—under this law, the U.S. patent system changed from
a “first-to-invent” to a “first-inventor-to-file” system effective March 16, 2013
Noncompete agreement—an agreement that prohibits an employee not to work for any
competitors for a period of time, often one or two years
Nondisclosure clause—a clause in an employment contract that states that an employee
cannot take copies of computer programs or reveal the details of software owned by the
firm, even when they leave
Prior art—the existing body of knowledge that is available to a person of ordinary skill in
the art
Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act of
2008—it increased trademark and copyright enforcement and substantially increased
penalties for infringement