Intellectual Property Strategies in Security and Privacy

Abstract

With the US government increasingly tending towards eavesdropping on voice/online conversations and investing in data-mining efforts such as the Total Information Awareness project, and with foreign laws such as those requiring ISPs to keep email records for extended periods of time and to facilitate decryption of records by authorities, an increasing number of companies will develop surveillance technologies to be sold to governments. Such technologies will include data-mining algorithms for data, voice, and video information, firewalls and intrusion detectors, encryption/decryption techniques, massive storage systems, etc. implemented in software and/or hardware. The US Government’s push to increase national security has created many applications for biometric devices which have traditionally been used in local and small-scale security settings. On the other hand, technologies emerge to counter “Big Brother” and ensure citizens’ privacy. Examples involve the National ID controversy, unbreakable encryption schemes, untraceable and self-destructing email/publications, virtual private networks (VPNs), anonymous internet browsing, and eavesdrop detectors which will enable citizens to live privately in and out of cyberspace. Consumer demand for these technologies will increase harmoniously with the government’s increasing surveillance of what citizens consider private. IDC reports that the total IP VPN market will explode from $5.4 billion in 2001 to nearly $14.7 billion in 2006 [1]. The biggest issue in this area concerns the bottleneck of information that various devices gather without an efficient means of analysis to transform the information into a meaningful interpretation. Entrepreneurs who can solve the informational logjam riddle by developing new applications for these technologies--and can secure the associated patents-will be richly rewarded. With the high demand for these technologies that will likely occur, the probability that competitors will want to practice the associated patents is high, thus adding extra value to these registered patents.