Ethics in Information

Technology,

Chapter 6
Intellectual Property
 Objectives
As you read this chapter, consider the following
questions:
• What does the term intellectual property include,
and what measures can organizations take to
protect their intellectual property?
• What are some of the current issues associated
with the protection of intellectual property?

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THE TRADEMARKS

A trademark is a type of intellectual property

consisting of word, phrase, symbol, and/or design
that identifies and distinguishes the source of the
goods of one party from those of others.
Types of Trademarks
CURRENT INTELL ECTUAL
PROPERTY ISSUES
This section discusses several issues that apply to
intellectual property and information technology,
including

• Plagiarism,
• Reverse engineering,
• Open source code,
• Competitive intelligence,
• Trademark infringement, and
• Cybersquatting
 1. Plagiarism

Theft and passing off of someone’s ideas or words

as one’s own
Many students
– Do not understand what constitutes plagiarism
– Believe that all electronic content is in the public
domain

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The explosion of electronic content and the
growth of the web have made it easy to cut and
paste paragraphs into term papers and other
documents without proper citation or quotation
marks.
Plagiarism detection systems
– Check submitted material against databases
of electronic content
 Plagiarism (continued)
Steps to combat student plagiarism
– Help students understand what constitutes
plagiarism
– Show students how to document Web pages
– Schedule major writing assignments in portions
– Tell students that you know about Internet paper mills
– Educate students about plagiarism detection
services
– Incorporate detection software and services into a
comprehensive antiplagiarism program.

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Partial List of Plagiarism Detection
Services and Software

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 2. Reverse Engineering
The process of duplicating an existing component,
subassembly, or product, without the aid of drawings,
documentation, or computer model is known as
reverse engineering.

For example,
when a new machine comes to market, competing
manufacturers may buy one machine and disassemble
it to learn how it was built and how it works.
A chemical company may use reverse engineering to
defeat a patent on a competitor’s manufacturing
process.
 Continued..

In civil engineering, bridge and building

designs are copied from past successes so
there will be less chance of catastrophic
failure.
In software engineering, good source code is
often a variation of other good source code.
 Reverse Engineering(continued)
• Process of taking something apart in order to
– Understand it
– Build a copy of it
– Improve it
• Applied to computer
– Hardware
– Software
• Convert a program code to a higher level design
• Convert an application that ran on one vendor’s
database to run on another’s
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 Reverse Engineering (continued)
• Compiler
– Language translator
– Converts computer program statements expressed
in a source language to machine language
• Software manufacturer
– Provides software in machine language form
• Decompiler
– Reads machine language
– Produces source code

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 Benefits and Issues of Reverse
Engineering
• Reduces the time and cost
• No one challenges the right to use this process to
convert applications developed in-house.
Issues:
• Unethical
• Intellectual Property issues
• Reverse Engineering Compiler (REC): used
competitor’s program code to develop a new
program
 Reverse Engineering (continued)
• Courts have ruled in favor of using reverse
engineering
– To enable interoperability
• Software license agreements prohibit
reverse engineering
• Semiconductor Chip Protection Act (SCPA)
– Established a new type of intellectual property
protection for mask works

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 3. Open Source Code
• Program source code made available for use or
modification
– As users or other developers see fit
• Basic premise
– Software improves
– Can be adapted to meet new needs
– Bugs rapidly identified and fixed
• High reliability

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Reasons that firms or individual developers create open
source code, even though they do not receive money
for it, include the following:
• Some people share code to earn respect for solving
a common problem in an elegant way.
• Some people have used open source code that was
developed by others and feel the need to pay back
by helping other developers
• A firm may be required to develop software as part of
an agreement to address a client’s problem
• A firm may develop open source code in the hope of
earning software maintenance fees if the end user’s
needs change in the future.
• A firm may develop useful and might donate the
code to the general public.

A software developer could attempt to make a program

open source simply by putting it into the public domain
with no copyright.