What Constitutes Intellectual Property Online?

Intellectual Property is considered to be any idea, concept, writing, imagery or creation that was created uniquely by one person, entity or group. The classic forms of intellectual property include (but are not limited) to patents, trademarks, musical compositions, books, articles, and artwork. The rise of computing and multimedia has blurred the definition of many of these creations. The Internet has allowed for the rapid dissemination and sharing of creations, but has also created more opportunities for plagiarism or violation of intellectual property rights. Intellectual property online includes:
• Uploaded photos; these images belong to the photographer or creator unless licensed or stated to belong to the digital commons. It is a violation of private property rights to copy privately held images and modify them for any purpose, including humour and parody. Copying the images of someone and using them in an online ad is as illegal as taking a picture of an ad on Fifth Avenue and using it on a poster in Prague.
• Articles, blogs and webpage content; this content is considered private intellectual property by the content creator; short excerpts from the writings of others, if attributed, is no more theft than citing a paperback book. However, copying their articles to post on another website is a violation of their intellectual property.
• Videos; these are merely a form of moving pictures. Editing the videos created by others or modifying them is a violation of the intellectual property rights of the rightful owners. This is as illegal as the sharing of pirated music and movies online. This difference is that the movie and music industries have had the means to find those illegally sharing their major releases while most private individuals rarely discover that their posted videos on video websites are copied by others or that their video logs may have been twisted to a new and unapproved purpose.
• Software; software is a creation of the programmer or group of programmers. It may belong to the individual or the company that hired them. Open source software was the intellectual property of an entity that then relinquished their rights. Unix, Ubuntu, Fedora, Open Office, and MySQL are examples of this. Yet these companies or licensing organizations often retain the intellectual property rights to the software. Many offer their lower end software for free but require paid licenses to access their Enterprise software editions or require payment for advice and customization. Even open source code may only allow free use and distribution as long as no one else seeks to profit from it.

About the author:
Claire Jarrett runs Marketing By Web and recommends Innovate IP for intellectual property advice and trade mark registration UK