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- Intellectual property
- 4 types of protection
- 1. patent -compositions of matter, devices
- 2. copyright - original expression (including software)
- 3. trademark - source id/consumer goodwill
- 4. trade secret - valuable, secret business
- What is copyrightable?
- -original works, including software
- -default rule is authorship = ownership (unless it's a work made for hire for your employer)
- -author has exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, perform, display and modify the work during the author's lifetime + 70 years
- -if you write a program from scratch with all original lines of code, you own it
- Licenses and 'open source'
- -license permits someone else to take certain actions with your code and restricts other actions
- -microsoft lets you use office, but gives no access to source code, so you can't reverse engineer, etc
- -code licensed under an open source license lets you redistribute and use in source and binary forms with or without modification as long as you credit original authors
- -hereditary open source lets you run, use, copy, distribute and modify, but prohibits distribution without providing the recipient a copy of the full source code
- -if you use someone else's code, you must do so in compliance with with terms of the license
- -shouldn't reverse engineer and bake Office into your project code
- -if you have grand commercialization plans, consider carefully use of hereditary code
- For our projects, the code will likely be so intermingled that authorship of any single part will be impossible to determine
- Who owns it?
- 1. do nothing
- -default is that everything is so intermingled that each individual has the right to stop any other team member from using any part of it
- -you may agree to an allocation or end up fighting each other over it
- -the product may end up going nowhere if everyone can't agree
- 2. agree that each team member has the right to do whatever they want without any else's input or oversight
- -team could agree that each member has teh right to freely use the entire product
- -compete on the merits of your commercial plan, but you may step on each other's toes
- 3. assign ownership to one team member
- -you could all agree to assign your rights to one team member
- -the assignee would have the sole right to control the project
- 4. assign ownership to a third party
- -each team member assigns rights to an entity
- -this is how founders in a startup typically do it
- -but question remains, who owns the entity and in what shares? Who funds it? Who manages the entity?
- Other things to consider:
- 1. If you assign your rights, what should you receive in return? Anything?
- 2. If you assign your rights, make it clear that you will be presenting the project to outsiders
- 3. The projects will utilize open source, which may reduce the value
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