The development of software was considered until the beginning of the 1990th as a cathedral like product development in closed companies. This way of development changed in the last decade. Open source software (OSS) development challenged this consideration significantly. OSS is produced in co-operation by skilled people, distributed and used by many moral agents. The result, the software itself, can be studied and modified. Herein is the main incentive for people to develop the software. In such a mode of production the freedom to access knowledge and information (=source code) is a necessity to produce the artifact (software). Software is a digital entity. The main difference in comparison to natural resources like oil, land, minerals is that it can be used and reproduced without losses. It lacks the capacity of getting naturally scarce. Contemporary intellectual property rights assume implicitly that goods might getting scarce one day. Imbedded in the term intellectual property is also an idea of "fencing" objects. In this thesis I will argue that anartificial"encing"of digital objects might cause unintentional bad consequences for the society. An other quality intellectual property rights are claimed to have is that they serve as an incentive for inventors/authors to produce new inventions and ideas. The practice of OSS development works without such an incentive provided by intellectual property rights. The moral conflict, which I attempt to unravel in this work deals with the question to what extend the application of intellectual property rights in software is necessary and how restrictive particular property rights in digital objects should be - if there should be any at all. Knowledge as the factor of production is of the same value in knowledge societies as land was for agrarian societies. The difference is in the mode of production and the un-limitless availability of digitalized knowledge. I argue that the"protection"of knowledge, and software is knowledge, has to be carefully revised in so called knowledge societies.

University of Macau / Faculty of Law

Property rights are the backbone of Western Civilization. Capitalism can only be successful if individuals feel secure about the ownership of their assets. Patents are the property rights granted to the inventor by the government. Without these rights, inventors will find it extremely difficult monetizing their contributions to society. Thus, in an effort to incentivize innovation and commit society to human progress, our Founding Fathers built our country on a strong set of intellectual property rights. At the same time, nothing impedes innovation like a monopoly and, in essence, all a patent amounts to is a monopoly, the right to exclude others from monetizing a specific innovation over an extended period of time. Hence, at the margin, patents increase the incentive to create new patentable knowledge, while simultaneously also stifling the dissemination of that knowledge. A good patent system strikes the right balance between innovation and a government-granted, anti-competitive monopoly. After a 20-year period of an unprecedentedly pro-patent environment in the United States, the value of patents has never been higher. Patents, as opposed to their intended use of incentivizing innovation, are now seen as a form of protection against litigation, and also a weapon to litigate patent infringements to extract license fees and royalty payments from companies who are supposedly in violation of these patents. The pendulum has swung, and patents are now stifling innovation to an extent not conceived of by our Founding Fathers. This thesis will explore the reasons for the extreme increase in the value of patents over the years and will attempt to propose a plan of action to swing the pendulum back where our Founding Fathers originally intended it to be.

Freedom of speech is a right guaranteed by the US, the EU, and China; however, just because a right is guaranteed does not mean the government cannot manipulate the right to achieve its ends. Freedom of speech is commonly associated with the power of language; citizens speak in order to take control of those governing them, in order to assert their desires. In reality, freedom of speech is far more beneficial for governments, who can use this dissent to better control a population. In order to control the population, though, the governments must first control the dissenting speech, the discourse, surrounding an issue. In the case studies that follow, these three governments with very different regimes will manipulate discourses elicited in the name of free speech in order to advance the governments’ plans, even when these plans went against the stated public interest and ignored the dissenting citizens. This thesis, in essence, examines how freedom of speech can become a tool of power for regimes.

Informationsplattformen Internet har blivit som en självklarhet för många. Dock har den tekniska utvecklingen medfört omfattande upphovsrättsintrång på Internet och utmaningen att komma till rätta med problemet utgör främst fall där Internetleverantörer eller så kallade mellanhänder av teknikens hjälp endast tillhandahåller uppkoppling till nätet. Med anledning av att Internetleverantörers tjänster utnyttjas av kunder för att begå intrång kan det diskuteras huruvida det är möjligt och eftersträvbart att ålägga dessa leverantörer en blockeringsskyldighet för att begränsa åtkomsten av Internet. Vitesförbudsbestämmelsen 53 b § i upphovsrättslagen och även annan reglering ger begränsat utrymme för att meddela förelägganden mot mellanhänder i den utsträckning som torde vara önskvärd utifrån den olagliga verksamhet som förekommer på Internet. Med stöd av 53 b § har Internetleverantörer förbjudits att tillhandahålla uppkoppling till tjänster som används på ett sätt som innebär upphovsrättsintrång. Domstolen är uppenbart medveten om att ”förbjuda uppkoppling” respektive ”blockera” endast innebär en hårfin skillnad. Även i den situation när tjänsten kommer ifrån ett land utanför EU och torde vara laglig i det landet verkar heller inte påverka svaret på frågan. Det kan anses att EU-rätten talar för en mer generös tolkning med hänsyn till exempelvis ett nyligen avgjort mål från Storbritannien. Dock framgår det av EU-rättspraxis att nationell domstol inte tillåts att i förebyggande syfte och utan utredning om intrång framtvinga blockering eller införande av filtreringssystem. En annan frågeställning som aktualiseras är om en möjlig censur av Internet kan anses förenlig med censurförbudet i grundlagarna och om ett åläggande kan anses förenligt med förbudet för medlemstaterna att ålägga en allmän övervakningsskyldighet för tjänsteleverantörer. / Internet as a platform for information has become as obvious to many. However, technological developments have resulted in widespread copyright infringement on the Internet and the challenge to deal with the problem are mostly cases where Internet service providers (ISPs) or known as intermediaries by using technology only provides connectivity to the Internet. As a result of those ISPs whose services are utilized by customers to infringe, it may be arguable whether it is possible and pursued to impose these suppliers a blockage obligation to limit access of the Internet. The rule of injunction § 53 b of the copyright law and other regulations provide limited scope for injunctions against intermediaries to the extent as would be desirable from the illegal activities on the Internet. According to § 53 b, the ISPs are banned from providing access to services that are used in a way that constitutes copyright infringement. The Court is obviously aware of the subtle difference between “prohibit access” and “block”. Even in the situation when the service comes from a country outside the EU and could probably be legal there does not seem to affect the response to the question. It may be considered that EU law could points out a more generous interpretation regarding, for example, a recently determined case from the UK. However, it appears from the EU law that national courts are not allowed to force blocking or introduction of filtering system only in order to prevent a future infringe and without investigation of such an infringe. Another question that arises is whether a possible censorship of the Internet can be considered as consistent with the censorship ban in the constitutions and whether an injunction may be considered compatible with the prohibition for Member States to impose a general monitoring obligation on service providers.

The Canadian canola breeding sector met a transition from publicly funded breeding research to large private investments in research and development (R&D). The increasing use of biotechnology tools in the mid 1990s made the assignment of plant ownership technically possible while the legislative safeguards that were put in place during the same period enabled owners to take juristic actions against potential infringers. Today, canola breeding sector is dominated by large multinational firms. The generation of proprietary knowledge in the canola breeding sector has caused a freedom to operate issue. Private and public firms conducting canola R&D are seriously concerned about their ability to gain and preserve access to key technologies in an IPR world. <p>This thesis uses the tragedy of the anticommons framework to analyze the consequences of increased intellectual property protection in the canola breeding sector. Theory suggests that when a common resource is owned by multiple owners, each of the owners has the incentive to overcharge potential users, leading to the underuse of the resource. In R&D, different owners of complementary technologies may overcharge potential R&D firms that want to assemble different technological pieces to produce a new one. The result is forgoing research and development of new products.<p>The results of personal interviews with thirteen canola researchers and IP officers are presented and analyzed. The results suggest that the increase in the intellectual property protection in the last two decades in the canola breeding sector has led to difficulties with canola R&D. These difficulties take the form of reduced access to current, proprietary and public material. With hampered access to research input material, research output is not maximized and potential research may be forgone. Interviewees described how the increase in the intellectual property protection affects their personal and organizations ability to conduct research as well as some the implications of the new IP regime on the canola breeding sector. There is indication that canola breeding sector is moving towards a super-protectionism. Under these conditions, canola R&D firms, private and public, are in search for ways that will open access to enabling technologies and research areas. The creation of platform technologies and collaborations are the most prominent ones and are observed to increase in occurrence world wide.

The government has included biological technology industries among the priorities of development program for ¡§challenge 2008--national development plan¡¨ and ¡§Two Trillions Double Stars Industries Development Plan¡¨. As the labor cost rising and many industries moving to Mainland China, several traditional industries in Taiwan have successfully transformed into biological technology industries for surviving, while some pharmaceutical industries seems not to do well as above. So the author would like to dip out intensively why non-pharmaceutical industries could convert the investment into biological technology sectors successfully than the pharmaceutical counterparts. It would collect some relevant data and get interviews from respective company and literature review, and then apply SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threats) analysis to understand what kinds of impediments those companies have encountered, how they resolved the problems and what results they yielded. May this study provide feasible advises about the optimal routes and approaches for Taiwan industries to transform into biological technology sectors by analyzing and comparing different cases of converted investment. The results that have been found are as follows: the converted investments which non-pharmaceutical industries embarked upon could divided into two approaches--- one for those companies that had adequately understand their own merits and felt they should convert the investment into biological technology sectors; another one is that the transformed company only hoped to facilitate the opportunity which government prioritized to market their products well. In near future, we would see the biological technology industries come to merger, vertical integration and strategic alliance due to research & development, marketing access and acquirements of capitals. According to this survey, most pharmaceutical companies wouldn¡¦t like to transform into biological technology industries because of some state policies, such as cGMP system, health insurance bureau lowering the payment for pharmaceutical companies, domestic markets having been liberated and new labor retirement pension fund systems. Besides, the pharmaceutical industries have been stepping up the speed of merger and shakeout, certainly would they not to transform into biological technology industries. Therefore, if the domestic industries hope to convert their investments, they should layout short-term and long-term strategies, which the former ought to take priority of creating the profits so as to facilitate the development of the latter which would focus on building up marketing accesses, cultivating R&D talents and their competences, as well as expanding strategic alliance actively with international enterprises for biological technology. To conclude, this study would provide Taiwan industries who tried to transform some advises, such as to consider merger, develop healthy food, beef up the integrated supply chains, loosen the conditions of becoming a listed company or OTC(over-the-counter) company, value the intellectual property right and open overseas markets.

Innovation ecosystem strategy is often adopted by platform technology owners to seek complementary innovation from resources located outside the firm to exploit indirect network effect. In this dissertation I aim to address the issues that are related to the formation and business value of platform innovation ecosystems in the enterprise software industry. The first study explores the role of three factors - increased payoff from access to platform owner's installed base, risk of misappropriation due to knowledge transfer, and the extent of competition - in shaping the decisions of third-party complementors to join a platform ecosystem. The second study evaluates the effect of participation in a platform ecosystem on small independent software vendors' business performances, and how their appropriability strategies, such as ownership of intellectual property rights or downstream complementary capabilities, affect the returns from such partnerships. Built upon resource based view and theory of dynamic capabilities, the third study reveals that users' co-innovation in enterprise information systems, measured by their participation in online professional community networks, constitute a source of intangible organizational asset that helps to enhance firm level IT productivity.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 149 pages. / Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: Who cares about who owns online courses? Nobody, because that is not what the issue is really about. Ownership is an emotional issue, but controlling the rights of a copyrightable work is tangible and logical. The important question to answer is not who owns online courses, but who controls the rights of any copyrightable work. For universities and faculty members, getting over the emotional issues and down to the foundation of what is truly at stake is of major concern. While it is nearly impossible to create qualitative guidelines for copyright policies and/or contracts, it is eminently possible to examine existing policies and contracts and relate how a handful of universities are handling copyright and intellectual property issues pertaining to online courses. / ABSTRACT: The purpose of this thesis is to provide a starting point for this complex transaction in the form of a resource tool that includes some basic background about copyright law, relevant case law related to "work-for-hire," and relevant academic freedom issues. The original work of this thesis is the creation of a tool, which reviews of a sampling of university policies pertaining to online copyright issues and ownership. Accordingly, the contribution this thesis makes to the understanding and clarification of universities policies related to online material copyright ownership will be important for faculty members and universities in two ways. First, it will help others develop better online copyright policies based on tangible issues rather than emotional ones. Second, this thesis can be a basis for others to build upon for future research on this important topic. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Social Sciences