Intellectual Property :: Intellectual Property Research Papers

Intellectual Property Globalization of the economy is helping companies to reduce product costs but is also creating a new set of challenges and issues. Managing intellectual property on a international landscape is tricky and the differences in the approach to patents between China, Europe and U.S. are profound. This paper focus and list some of the issues and differences on Intellectual Property between U.S. and Europe. The differences are analyzed from a business and ethical point of view. The paper end looking at the growing trend of open source. What is the ethical and moral motivation? International IP landscape The international Intellectual Property landscape is quite tricky and complex, but few important guidelines can help avoiding trouble and maximize the return. Most patents litigation cases are an attempt to position the companies in the market. Knowing the rules for getting and enforcing patents is important, an in most cases it is different from place to place. Although the globalization of the economy and exchange of goods has increase in the last decade, the international patent system is far from being operational. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was created to help creating an international legal framework for patents. To obtain a large coverage you still need to applied separate applications to 180 countries. This is both cost and time consuming and the validity is sometimes uncertain. Most company do file in different countries in Europe, Asia and North America. This is done as a result of a cost benefit analysis, based on the fact that targeting the right market lead to significant benefits related to operating in a larger market, and opportunity to negotiate patent licenses from other company in the same or different market. A important aspect, not considered most of the time, is the cost associated with the maintenance of the patent. This result in a continuously reevaluation of the IP portfolio. To help simplifying the file of patents, 123 countries signed the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). Filing a international patent with a PCT member offer up to 30 months to the company to file with other members. Certain processing is done centrally and there is a single application. The other benefit is the delay in recording the filing expenses that helps startup companies to reach the point when revenues are generated. This is becoming quickly the best practice, generating more that 114,000 applications in 2003. Despite differences in the handling and enforcing of patents across countries, in general, it is agreed that a invention must be novel, must be new, it must be non obvious and it must have some utility.