Intellectual Property Rights

Richard McCracken lead the latest doctoral training workshop, on a research student's guide to intellectual property rights.
Intellectual property covers:

• patents
• trademarks
• copyright
• know-how
  

and elabaorated on the distinctions, with an example of how they all combine in sometimes, e.g in CocaCola.

Patents - you can only patent something that has not been made public. There was the case of the LED, first presented at an academic conference, before the patent was applied for, and then couldn't be patented because it was already in the public arena.

Copyright rests with the author though there are circumstances in which you can relinquish it.

You need to be careful when signing journal contracts that you don't assign copyright to the journal because then you won't be able to use your own material without paying the journal. For instance, you couldn't photocopy your own article to distribute it to a class. So if you get a contract to be published in a journal, check and delete the clause that assigns copyright to the journal.

McCracken's advice on copyright came up again only a few hours later when I received an email explaining that I could not directly access some material from a web site because of copyright reasons.

There are restricted acts and permitted acts.

Photographs - you are permitted to take photos in public places, though it differs between countries. In France in the fifties Robert Doisneau took a photo called "Kiss" of two people kissing in the street. Every now and then, someone would turn up, saying that they are one of the couple and demanding money.