He Advantages and Disadvantages of Intellectual Property in the Digital Age.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defines anti-competitive practices as the many ways firms restrict inter-firm competition to maintain or to increase their relative market position and profits without necessarily providing goods and services at a lower price or at a higher quality. The American Federal Trade Commission states that anti-competitive practices include activities such as price fixing, group boycotts and exclusionary exclusive dealings. These activities are generally grouped as agreements between competitors (horizontal conduct) and monopolization (single firm conduct).

Protection of intellectual property are investments based on acquired knowledge, thought and effort by one or multiple individuals on behalf of themselves, the business they work for when the property is created, and a financial investment. Each of these – acquired knowledge, thought, physical effort, financial investment – have a value that can be attached as it relates the usefulness or importance of the resulting product. That value will have a level of importance to the individual(s) creating the product and if applicable, the investor providing the funds in support of the creation.

One of the most common, yet controversial, issues of First Amendment law is the subject of copyright and infringement. Although the subject may not seem major at first, many different issues and controversies have risen and become more common than ever over the years. The issues that have become pertinent to this subject are endless, including trademark infringement, piracy, theft, fraud, plagiarism, and many more. With the coming of age and advancement of technology, these cases have become more common and appear more often than ever before. Government officials have always been strict about copyright rulings, and have tried to deliver fair and just rulings for both parties involved under First Amendment rules. Because the owner’s work and material is protected under the First Amendment, it gets tricky when involving another party that can claim the same work of art. In short, the definition of copyright has always been cut and dry: allowing owners of creative works the right to control and profit from their creations. It is basically recognized as a form of property ownership.

Traditional legal principles and processes are constantly challenged by the need to keep pace with copyright issues in particular piracy. The Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015

Copyright is the legal right, to an inventor to perform, print, publish, film, or record artistic, literary, or musical material, and to allow others to do the same. Copyright law was developed to provide the creators and inventors of any works with powerful and effective rights of exclusivity over their creations (Patterson & Lindberg, 1991). Over the past, these rights were almost unlimited. People would use existing developments as if they were their own without any regard of the creator’s exclusive rights. The need to balance and limit such rights arose, and governments established these limits for the general good of the public.

The purpose of the copyright system has always been to promote creativity in society and protect the creators’ interests. In applying copyright laws to any creation, three basic guidelines apply. First is the fair return for a creators labor, second is “Fair Use” of the creators’ labor and finally the Progress of Science and useful Arts to further the public good. The application of these three guidelines in litigation for A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, found that the rights of reproduction, and distribution had been violated, in effect upholding the copyrights of nineteen different music companies represented under A&M Records name, this ruling had protected the music industries interests. However it would seem that the publishing industry would not be so lucky, litigation in Authors’ Guild vs. Google ruled that Google’s actions constituted fair use. Under these two scenarios’ the copyright laws’ have, effectively, protected the rights of music artists’, protected the public’s right to “fair use” and sparked new opportunities for creative growth. However, lawmakers continue to struggle to define copyright boundaries between the public’s right of use and the creators right to profit from their efforts.

With technology so readily available there are many people and companies who have participated in similar illegal activities. The original copyright law did not take into consideration the digital area. By implementing Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) it has tightened up the protection of things online and in the digital arena.

Current copyright protection is entitled to provide the essential mechanism for the insurance of the success viability of creative industries by rewarding and incentivising the creators of original works relating to films, music and broadcasts. The Copyright Act 1968 is initially designed to protect although, despite this, the advancement of technology has led to abuse of the Act, subsequently to withhold its dexterity, the Act has required modification, through; case and statute law. While acknowledging this, it must be understood that the codes; Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), Copyright Regulations 1969 (Cth), Copyright Tribunal Procedure Regulations 1969 (Cth) and the Copyright International Protection Regulations 1969 (Cth) are applied automatically once the work has been published in an accessible format; provided that the author/s are current citizens or residents of Australia. Throughout this report, the Copyright Act 1968 will be analysed in depth to provide a detailed understanding of whether it is possible for the law to be proactive with regards to future technologies. In a developing world of rapid changes and advancements in technology and human behaviour, there is no specific measure that can completely eliminate online copyright infringement.

The second form of intellectual property that must be implemented is Patent. We must protect

Online piracy is commonly referred to as a threat to businesses in the creative industries. The WTO Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (a.k.a. “the TRIPS” agreement) defines piracy as:

The rudimentary utilitarian view on copyrights is that they help to support the individuals who generate the creative culture for a society: if there are no legal controls over somebody copying or imitating someone else’s work, then these innovative people will not have enough incentive to continue creating new works (Lemley and Reese, 2004). If this were to truly happen, it would have a negative effect on the entire economy and the overall culture. However the raw material for new creative works is always found in the existing ideas of others — and copyright holders do not own the ideas expressed in their works (Litman, 2006). Innovation and creativity are always borrowed from the concepts created by others, so we must strike

Identify and discuss these copyright challenges in the modern digital economy using examples from case law.

The rise of the Internet era opened the whole new market for traditional media full of opportunities as well as threats. Online piracy being one of them because the music and film industry loses £5.4bn in a year and if it was reduced by 10% it could have created up to 13 thousand jobs in the UK. There are various attempts taken to fight with online piracy; a case study of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement will be considered as well as other legislations attempting to regulate copyrights in the Internet. This

There is such a legal concept as "intellectual property". Intellectual property is defined as the creation of any intellectual innovation by an individual such as musical, literary, and artistic works; discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. The law provides him exclusive rights to this innovation and is strictly against theft or plagiarism in any way. Innovators can safeguard their property by one or more of the following: copyright, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and in some jurisdictions trade secrets.. Copyrights, patents, and trade secrets are each authored by different Offices. Each is based on the Laws of Commerce. (LII. Intellectual property). Cultural attitudes, in fact, esteem words and knowledge above that of certain other property, since knowledge is something that cannot be as easily duplicated as, for instance, an article of common furniture can. To illustrate the veneration that contemporary society accords intellectual invention, software is more expensive and valuable than hardware sink the

Firstly, with laws to protect intellectual properties, it prevent and stop other companies from commercially using the protected intellectual properties in the marketplace, allowing the owner company to control the usage of their original