Who Owns Intellectual Property?

Who Owns Intellectual Property? from HBS Working Knowledge has some things to say both to lawyers and businesspeople.

"Turning to the Internet itself, and particularly to content-sharing sites, the matter of ownership is challenged in a different way. Content produced by news media as well as individuals acting as professionals or amateurs is being copied, spliced, and represented essentially as something so new and unique that it is often downloaded by hundreds of thousands of viewers who might not have watched the original material. Who owns the result? Does anyone owe others for the use of the content? If so, how much and for what share? Or has the culture of 'free' become so deeply imbedded in the minds of a new generation of users that content developers can only hope for partial, occasional, or eventual financial rewards for their efforts?"

The Internet has brought into question current laws on copyright and patent. Patent law underlies our computer age - Microsoft has patents on Windows and Intel has patents on the computer chip. On the other end of the spectrum is Linus and open-source software.

Let me be explicit about why this is so important: money, lots and lots of money are at stake here. Record and movie companies find themselves warring against the online-free ethos. (For an example of this see my post here.) I think they are losing but that is besides the point this morning.

Until this article, I thought trademarks would probably remain out of the copyright/patent/Internet fight. The following makes me wonder about that or if we will see a morphing of trademarks:

Wolff Olins' homepage presents a provocative redefinition of brands as practical platforms that enable people to do things. In its words, "As brands become less the property of an organisation and more the banner of a movement, ownership will become even looser. Logos will be things other organisations, and individuals, can borrow and adapt." That belief, they maintain, will require that some companies, in their own best interests, relinquish control over brands and "be more generous" with consumers. In other words, they take the risk of transferring ownership and quality control of what used to be called their brand to others. In this case, who owns the intellectual property?

Read the full article and the comments for a fuller explanation of what is going on.