Then if someone does steal your property, you have legal grounds to prosecute. When you want to protect software IP, both a copyright and a patent offer legal protection. Each option covers different parts of IP protection. Some people prefer one or the other, while others go for both. Alternatively, you can choose to treat your software as a trade secret. Deciding what to do is an important step in protecting your software. Trademarks are another option, but they don't protect your IP software code.
What they protect is the name of the software or a symbol you use to advertise the software. Trademarking your software's brand name is a good way to keep others from marketing a product under a confusingly similar name.
Copyright law defines copyright as : "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression. Copyright Law. So the way you express an idea, like a work of fiction or software in code, falls under Copyright law.
A copyright grants you specific rights in terms of your software. When you hold the copyright to software code, you can:. An official copyright registration is easy to get and doesn't cost you much. Copyrights last for the lifetime of the person who created the work, plus 70 years after that person's death. If you're copyrighting something you bought from a person you hired to create it, the copyright lasts for 95 years after you first publish that work, or years after the work is created, whichever comes first.
Some programmers worry about sending the code to the U. Copyright Office. If it's at the Copyright Office, you might worry competitors can look it up and take copies. However, you only have to send the first 25 pages and the last 25 pages, to identify your software.
If you have trade secrets in the software, you can black those out. Stealing from the software is more complicated than just plagiarizing because the software is more than just code. Software is an invention or an idea.
Copyright law only protects how that idea is written down. Because a software program does something specific, protecting against copying might not be enough.
Someone could use different code but still steal your invention. To protect a process, like the function of software, you need a patent. A patent will protect things like:.
You can use two types of patents to protect software: utility and design. Utility protects what the software does. Design protects any decorative part of your software. Unlike copyright law, patent law protects the invention itself.
That way, someone can't create a software program with different code that does the exact same thing your software does. But the patent doesn't protect your specific lines of code against plagiarism the way copyright does. Keep in mind: you register your copyright, so you aren't applying for anything. Learn more. Solutions for you How do information solutions drive innovation? Software RightFind Enterprise The fastest way to find, manage, and collaborate with content — anytime, anywhere.
Product Annual Copyright License An enterprise-wide, article licensing solution offering millions of rights from thousands of publishers. While all modern cars have on-board computers, due to their being comprised of exponentially more complex workings, it is still true that amateur mechanics enjoy tinkering with their toys on the weekends.
I can assure you that in we were not thinking about copyright. We were thinking about gas lines. Like all that farming data: who owns it? Where is it processed? How do you get it off the tractors without reliable broadband networks? What format is it in? If you want to use your John Deere tractor with another farming analysis vendor, how easy is that? Is it easy enough? To be clear, such a right is obviously not a Constitutional right — it is not specified or strongly implied in the Constitution.
Would those personal use-level activities be taken into consideration as well? There are some questions on the SF Questionnaire for National Security Positions that are specifically oriented toward professional behavior as well as the use of information technology systems.
Based on the examples in your question, I would suspect that you would likely have to answer Have any of the following happened to you in the last seven 7 years at employment activities that you have not previously listed? Received a written warning, been officially reprimanded, suspended, or disciplined for misconduct in the workplace, such as a violation of a security policy?
Answering in the affirmative requires that you complete a question in 13A to detail the event. Previous questions also require references at employers in the past 7 years, and your work behavior is likely to come up in contact with those references.
In the last seven 7 years have you illegally or without proper authorization accessed or attempted to access any information technology system? In the last seven 7 years have you illegally or without authorization, modified, destroyed, manipulated, or denied others access to information residing on an information technology system or attempted any of the above?
In the last seven 7 years, have you introduced, removed, or used hardware, software, or media in connection with any information technology without authorization, when specifically prohibited by rules, procedures, guidelines, or regulations or attempted any of the above. Falsifying this form is likely to be far, far more damaging than answering yes to any of these questions. I'm not sure that one of these will entirely remove your eligibility.
I don't have a link handy, but the results of some clearance adjudication reviews for contractors are actually posted. You'd probably be surprised at what gets approved, as long as you properly disclose it. I took my e-QIP in , so the questions may have changed since then, but basically I saw similar questions and asked my supervisor about them, specifically with how they related to downloaded songs and movies.
Her response was "They really don't care if you've downloaded a couple songs. If you've got a couple thousand, they might care. If you're running an underground distribution site, they definitely care. So if you're worried about a handful of isolated cases where you've maybe borrowed a friends windows DVD to install it for free, or you've used a YouTube ripper to get a copy of some of your favorite songs, do yourself and them a favor and don't waste their time with that.
So we have two extremes: one is "I run an illegal file sharing site" and the other is "I ripped a couple songs off YouTube".
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