Infringement Of Intellectual Property Rights Research Articles

Intermediary Liability for Online Copyright Infringement - A Recipe for Killing the Internet - A Comparative Analysis of the Law in Us and India

The Internet with which we are all familiar is a colossal network of computer networks. As we look back upon the late twentieth century, the growth of the Internet will be listed as one of mankind's greatest technological achievements. The amazing capability of the Internet to promote the exchange of knowledge, information, and ideas on a universal scale has surely revamped the way people intermingle. As the internet has grown, the problem of online infringement of intellectual property rights has assumed gigantic proportions and developed into an economically major issue. In this scenario, this paper: 1. Defines an Intermediary2. Draws the basis for Intermediary liability3. Analyses the legal standards of liability of Intermediary in US Pre and Post DMCA regime in US4. Examines the provisions of the Copyright Act, 2012 and compares it with the law under Copyright Act 1957

Experimental investigations on the basis for intellectual property rights.

Lay people routinely misunderstand or do not obey laws protecting intellectual property (IP), leading to a variety of (largely unsuccessful) efforts by policymakers, IP owners, and researchers to change those beliefs and behaviors. The current work tests a new approach, inquiring whether lay people's views about IP protection can be modified by arguments concerning the basis for IP rights. Across 2 experiments, 572 adults (recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk) read 1 of 6 arguments about the basis for IP protection (incentives, natural rights, expressive rights, plagiarism, commons, or no argument). Participants then reported their general support for IP protection. Participants also reported their evaluations of 2 scenarios that involved infringement of IP rights, including cases in which there were mitigating experiences (e.g., the copier acknowledged the original source), and completed several demographic questions. Three primary findings emerged: (a) exposure to the importance of the public commons (and to a lesser extent, exposure to the argument that plagiarism is the basis of IP protection) led participants to become less supportive of IP protection than the incentives, natural rights, expressive rights, and control conditions; (b) people believed that infringement was more acceptable if the infringer acknowledged the original creator of the work; and (c) older adults and women were especially likely to see infringement as problematic. These findings illustrate several ways in which lay beliefs are at odds with legal doctrine, and suggest that people's views about IP protection can be shaped in certain ways by learning the basis for IP rights. (PsycINFO Database Record

Entertaining Foreign Copyrights

This paper discusses the implications of the UK Supreme Court’s decision in Lucasfilm, focusing on the issue of jurisdiction over cases involving foreign infringement of intellectual property rights. Part II focuses on the implications of Lucasfilm in the context of cross-border infringement cases. Part III discusses cross-border ownership problems, a topic that was not raised in the context of Lucasfilm.

Indirect infringement of intellectual property in China

China has no clear rules for addressing indirect infringement of intellectual property rights, and Chinese courts are split widely on how to find liability for indirect infringement. The two most controversial topics for Chinese courts are the level of knowledge and the types of contributing activities that are required for indirect infringement liability. Although Chinese courts frequently use the red flag and wilful blindness standards for imputing constructive knowledge to alleged indirect infringers, some Chinese courts arguably misuse the wilful blindness standard in requiring only knowledge of a high possibility of infringement. By thus failing to require that a defendant also deliberately act to avoid learning that infringement is in fact occurring, the wilful blindness standard in actual Chinese judicial practice approximates the recklessness standard. Indeed, some Chinese courts go even further and impose indirect infringement liability based simply on the defendant's business model, regardless of whether the defendant had knowledge of infringement. With regard to the second issue, the type of contributing activities necessary for indirect infringement liability, Chinese courts have no uniform standard and are greatly divided on what constitutes such contributing activity. Some courts require affirmative action on the part of the defendant, while other courts focus simply on the defendant's duty of care, looking not at whether the defendant committed some affirmative act but only at whether it failed to meet its duty of care.

Some Bad News Is Good News for Foreign Investors: The Case of Intellectual Property Rights Infringement in China

AbstractDespite China's attractiveness to foreign investors, intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in China has not caught up with international standards. This research aims to quantify the relationships between IPR violations, government effectiveness, and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in the context of China. Our econometric modeling and estimation based on provincial level data over 2002‐2012 show that in an early development stage of law and regulatory enforcement, the bad news of a rising number of IPR dispute cases signals the good news of an improvement in law and regulatory enforcement, which encourages IPR owners to raise legal cases. By contrast, in the later development stage, when law and regulatory enforcement has become much more effective, the bad news of a rising number of IPR disputes manifests itself as very bad news. Furthermore, this study confirms that FDI inflows enhance IPR protection through improving government effectiveness, and government effectiveness is one of the key factors promoting FDIs. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Political Values, Culture, and Corporate Litigation

Using one of the largest samples of litigation data available to date, we examine whether the political culture of a firm determines its propensity for corporate misconduct. We measure political culture using the political contributions of top managers, firm political action committees, and local residents. We show that firms with a Republican culture are more likely to be the subject of civil rights, labor, and environmental litigation than are Democratic firms, consistent with the Democratic ideology that emphasizes equal rights, labor rights, and environmental protection. However, firms with a Democratic culture are more likely to be the subject of litigation related to securities fraud and intellectual property rights violations than are Republican firms, whose party ideology stresses self-reliance, property rights, market discipline, and limited government regulation. Upon litigation filing, both types of firms experience similar announcement reaction, which suggests that the observed relationship between political culture and corporate misconduct is unlikely to reflect differences in expected litigation costs. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2014.2106 . This paper was accepted by Brad Barber, finance.

Anger and perception of unfairness and harm: Cultural differences in normative processes that justify sanction assignment

Drawing on moral foundation theory, the author found that in response to an infringement of intellectual property rights, both US and Chinese samples reported anger and evaluated the infringement negatively. The results also highlight the importance of considering cultural factors in moral decision-making. Apparently, in Chinese culture, moral decisions tend to be norm-based, even when people are assigning sanction to a transgression of the ethics of autonomy. In contrast, in American culture, moral decisions tend to be preference-based. Furthermore, although people tend to express their anger through punishment and contempt and disgust with social exclusion, in the American context, due to its relatively high mobility, to express their moral anger, individuals prefer to sanction wrongdoing by socially isolating the wrongdoer.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: INTER-DISCIPLINARY NATURE - SOME LEGAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS (Part 1)

In Georgia, similar to developed industrial countries, IP should become more and more expensive asset and can play the determining role in idealization of any governing/managerial strategies – be it strategies for development, stabilization, anti-crisis or other. Realization of given strategy will increase market capitalization of assets by an average 10-12%. Unfortunately, the majority of registered legal persons in Georgia does not properly manage intellectual property and does not take appropriate measures for its protection. When exporting goods to foreign countries, they often avoid lengthy procedures and financial expenditures needed for patenting devices, methods, substances or microorganism strains. At the same time, the existing mechanisms of state regulation in the sphere of IP are rather limited due to low effectiveness of applied forms and methods. Such an assumption is validated by the fact that the state governance mechanisms mostly rely on the economic and administrative influence methods which are less effective and require significant corrections. Paragraph 154 of the Agreement on association between the EU and Georgia essentially concerns protection and realization of the authors’ economic, business interests as well. It is pity that in the Agreement on association, with regard to intellectual property, the discussion concerns only economic and business aspects of this institute, but does not make any emphasis on its sociological component. To put order to the above and similar issues and to eliminate existing faults it is necessary to create a parliamentary commission on studying the intellectual property in the Parliament of Georgia and also to establish the Experts Council for protection of intellectual property and fighting against the counterfeit and piracy by the Government of Georgia. In Georgia, there is a high rate of violation of the special property and personal non-property rights of the holders of copyrights and adjoining rights, as well high share of counterfeit products. The culture of replicating and using the objects of intellectual property is at the relatively low level. Non-existence of a conceptually grounded policy harms the interests of the stakeholders such as creators of the intellectual property objects and those using these rights (holders of rights). In modern Georgia, none of the above mentioned stakeholders (society, state, other stakeholders) can be considered as fully protected by state from the violation of their rights. In particular, creators are frequently deprived of the possibility to make complete realization of own property or personal non-property rights, holders of rights – to protect themselves from piracy and unfair competition, consumers – to receive goods of the appropriate quality and the state – to receive the hidden tax revenues into state budget. Apart from that, significant violation of intellectual property rights brings the serious social effect.

Trends on the implementation of the EU Customs Regulation: for better or for worse?

Customs enforcement of intellectual property rights remains the most important means the EU uses to block the trade in counterfeit goods. As a monitoring mechanism, the Commission publishes annually a report on customs action to enforce intellectual property rights based on its Customs Regulation. A new Customs Regulation (Regulation 608/2013) came into force in January 2014 and serves as the legal basis for the 2014 customs report. Analysing the content of this new Regulation and those of the Commission's annual reports from the years 2008–2013, and based on recent case law, this article argues that the new Regulation would more likely ‘do a better job’ in the fight against counterfeiting compared to its predecessor, based on: (1) the novel inclusion of devices which enable circumvention of technology; (2) a new simplified procedure for the destruction of small consignments of goods; (3) an EU-wide simplified procedure for all (other) infringements of intellectual property rights; and (4) a non-legislative Union Customs Action Plan(s) to combat intellectual property rights infringements.

“The Fruits of Intellectual Labor”: International Student Views of Intellectual Property

In this paper, we report on the results of a study conducted at New York University Abu Dhabi in the fall of 2013. Our goal in the study was to gain a global college student perspective on issues related to intellectual property, including copyright and plagiarism. We found that, contrary to popular opinion, most of our students have a solid understanding of the nature of intellectual property rights, as interpreted within the North American higher education community. In addition, the majority of our students view violations of intellectual property rights and norms, such as plagiarism, negatively.

Search engine liability for autocomplete suggestions: personality, privacy and the power of the algorithm

This article is concerned with the liability of search engines for algorithmically produced search suggestions, such as through Google’s ‘autocomplete’ function. Liability in this context may arise when automatically generated associations have an offensive or defamatory meaning, or may even induce infringement of intellectual property rights. The increasing number of cases that have been brought before courts all over the world puts forward questions on the conflict of fundamental freedoms of speech and access to information on the one hand, and personality rights of individuals— under a broader right of informational self-determination—on the other. In the light of the recent judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) in Google Spain v AEPD, this article concludes that many requests for removal of suggestions including private individuals’ information will be successful on the basis of EU data protection law, even absent prejudice to the person concerned.

New European Regulation 608/2013 Concerning Combating Counterfeit Goods

This paper identifies the changes that have occurred with the repeal of Anti-Counterfeiting Regulation (EC) 1383/2003 and the introduction of Regulation (EU) No. 608/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council on 12 June 2013. A summary is provided of the impact of the new Regulation, taking into account customs enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR), whether an IPR infringement has occurred, and clarification of the prerequisites for action by Customs. The paper identifies two essential areas that remain excluded from the Regulation’s scope of application: parallel imports including overruns and travellers’ personal luggage, and highlights the need for these areas to be addressed in future amendments to the Regulation.

Proving the infringement of digital intellectual property rights: Overview of the Anglo-saxon legal system

The multifaceted process of identifying and proving the infringement of intellectual property rights is further complicated and aggravated in the so-called analogue environment. The development of Information Technologies has given rise to a new set of problems. The digital technology has facilitated the infringement of intellectual property rights and additionally aggravated the process of proving these infringements. Hence, it is the duty of digital forensics to identify relevant (valid) evidence and present it in the court of law, which is not an easy task. In that course, the problems are twofold: legal and technical. First of all, the legislation in many countries is not adjusted to resolving the issues constantly emerging in the digital environment and there are apparent differences in the manner of regulating these issues. On the other hand, there is no standardized and unified technology which would provide for a uniform qualification and comprehensive treatment of these issues. Moreover, the place of commission of these criminal offences as a rule does not coincide with the place of occurring legal consequences. Yet, in spite of all these difficulties, there are technological methods and tools which facilitate the detection of cybercrime and provide evidence for securing relevant punishment. In the time to come, the developments in this area are expected to be aimed at strengthening the protection of legitimate interests of holders of intellectual property rights.

Research on Intellectual Property Protection under Network Information Sharing Environment

As a powerful weapon of an acceleration of technological progress and economic development the intellectual property protection system also has an unprecedented attention. The development of digital technology significantly increased possibility of the intellectual property infringement behavior. In this paper, the network sharing of information is bound to increase behaviors network infringement of intellectual property rights, and increase the difficulty of intellectual property protection. Through summarizing the characteristics of network intellectual properties and information network sharing under the network environment, the contradictory and unified relationship between network sharing and intellectual property protection is made in-depth analysis. This paper attempts to think the rationality of the existence of intellectual property rights under the network environment, and research the legitimacy of Internet intellectual property rights and Internet environment protection of intellectual property rights interests balance theory and incentive theory problems.

Entry, reputation and intellectual property rights enforcement

AbstractWe examine how reputation concerns induce a multinational to partly withhold its entry into a developing country under weak intellectual property rights (IPR) enforcement. Equilibrium IPR violations are shown to arise only in the presence of such concerns. Holding constant a multinational's incentive to innovate, better IPR enforcement encourages entry but reduces social welfare. The multinational's incentive to innovate may be inversely U‐shaped in the strength of IPR enforcement. If timed properly, however, stronger IPR enforcement can foster innovation without compromising social welfare. Testable implications concerning observable IPR violations are derived.

Political Values, Culture, and Corporate Litigation

Using one of the largest samples of litigation data to date, we examine whether the political culture of a firm determines its propensity for corporate misconduct. We measure political culture using the political contributions of top managers, firm PACs, and its local residents. We show that firms with Republican culture are more likely to be the subject of civil rights, labor and environmental litigation than Democratic firms, consistent with the Democratic ideology that emphasizes equal rights, labor rights, and environmental protection. However, firms with Democratic culture are more likely to be the subject of litigation related to securities fraud and intellectual property rights violations than Republican firms whose Party ideology stresses self-reliance, property rights, market discipline, and limited government regulation. Upon litigation filing, both types of firms experience similar announcement reaction, which suggests that the observed relation between political culture and corporate misconduct is unlikely to reflect differences in expected litigation costs.

Explaining Software Piracy using a New Set of Indicators

Previous literature has used common aggregated indices as a proxy for intellectual property rights (IPR) institutional quality to assess their importance in determining piracy rates. The main contribution of this study is to empirically assess the relative importance of IPR institutional developments by differentiating between provision of laws protecting IPRs and their enforcement. These are observed through a factor analysis comprising different variables reflecting the copyright related laws, regulations, and agreements executed by 85 member countries of the WTO in addition to other economic and institutional characteristics of these countries. Using cross-country software piracy rates as a proxy for IPR violations from 1994 to 2010, our results indicate that per capita income, individualism, literacy, internet spread, the number of IPR laws and agreements in a country, and judicial independence significantly determine the level of a nation’s software piracy rates. On the other hand, international threats by the United States Trade Representative (USTR) do not have a significant impact on the prevailing piracy situation.

Potentials and Perils of E-Business in China

The E-business market in China is growing at an exponential rate. In 2013, the business volume is expected to reach $285 billion which surpasses the level in the U.S. As a result, there is a gold rush to China to participate in the market. This article discusses the potential but also points out the perils. This paper also focuses on the competition in the Chinese E-business market, and reveals that the Chinese online business is almost completely monopolized by only one seller, Taobao, which accounts for 81.2% of the whole E-business market. This article further considers the tax burden of the Internet commerce transaction which found that the Chinese government imposes a value-added tax at a rate of 17%. This rate is much higher than the sales tax rate at 7% in the U.S. Additionally, this article investigates the problem of counterfeited products and infringement of intellectual property rights. It discovered that this problem is rampant in China. The losses in international trade amount to $360 billion a year. Eighty percent of the counterfeited products were originated in China. The problem is extremely serious. Moreover, this article offers many planning strategies for operating an E-business in China. Despite the perils, this article concludes that the benefits of running an E-business in China outweigh the risks.

Improving Australian Border Enforcement of IPR by Referring to the Chinese Experience

The border enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR), known as IPR customs protection, plays an important role in the national and global endeavour of combating IPR infringements especially in the growing trend in counterfeiting and piracy. Australia and China are among the countries that have put in place a comprehensive IPR border enforcement regime for this purpose. This paper analyses key aspects of Australia’s regime compared with that of China, and proposes improvements to the former with reference to the Chinese experience to strengthen the customs protection of IPR in Australia.

Laws on Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights, Philippines

This contains the basic rules of procedure in filing cases for violation of intellectual property rights. Jurisprudence on infringement of patents, trademarks/tradenames and copyrights are also discussed.