IP Archives - Woolf Media & Marketing

Okay, I ripped off this video to share with you here. I am not going to make money sharing this content, but if the proposed SOPA and PIPA legislation pass, my sharing this information would become illegal.

I have some thoughts on what Clay Shirky offers in this particular TED talk. Whether you agree with what Shirky has to say or not, I do know that mainstream media producers are rabid about protecting their intellectual property. As they should be! As a content producer myself, I understand the value of copyright and being able to protect your ideas and your work so someone else doesn’t steal it for their own gain. However, as I understand it, the new SOPA and PIPA legislation now before Congress will do more than just protect IP, but it will eliminate the ability to openly share a lot of the information we exchange today. Social media and the Web as we know it may disappear.

During my formative years as a trade journalist, I watched the copyright wars play out in the home video business, in the satellite TV business, and elsewhere. Video advocates like Jack Valenti of the Motion Picture Association of America were incredibly threatened by new technology such as Betamax, the VHS video recorder, DVDs, and computers. Digitization of entertainment made it easier to disseminate over channels such as the Internet, and led to the birth of whole new sub industries, both legal and illegal, to address content protection. I was part of the rise and fall of the home satellite industry which boomed when home owners miles from the nearest cable link or TV station suddenly discovered they could get TV signals direct from the satellite, until the content owners like HBO and ESPN decided to scramble their signal to prevent theft. That led to the birth of the underground black box industry, as well as new industries like DirecTV. Technological progress has often been the result of the struggle between information dissemination and content protection, but where do you draw the line?

What constitutes fair use of IP? In my mind it has to do with profit. If you are not stealing content for profit, or maliciously trying to undermine someone’s copyright for illicit purposes, then if you purchased the content, it should be yours to use as you wish. Apple has been progressive in this regard; they figured out a way to sell you music that you can play on your computer, on your portable music player, or burn to a CD for your car and still protect the artist’s copyright. If I buy a movie, I want the license to include the ability to watch on my computer, on my TV, or on my phone if I choose without having to buy the same product multiple times. It would be nice to share parts of that content with family and friends, assuming I am not undermining the artist’s rights to earn a profit from their work. But where do you draw the line?

I believe in protecting IP, but not at the expense of locking down all freedom of expression. As Shirky notes, consumers like to share as well as consume, and creative sharing will actually increase profit from IP, not limit it. What the “old school” media have failed to grasp is the power of the Internet, especially social media, to sell their product. I buy music, movies, books, and other digital products because I get to sample it; because people send me clips or I found online sound bites that inspire me to purchase the original work.

If you take away the freedom to share content, then the flow of information will slow to a trickle and we all will suffer, including the media companies behind SOPA and PIPA. If sharing digital content becomes illegal, then we all run the risk of becoming criminals.

Let’s all work to defeat legislative stupidity and promote a fairer, wiser alternative.

As PR people and marketers, we are in the idea and information business. We help clients formulate and package new ideas that, in turn, help them solidify and promote their unique brand value. But can you own an idea or the process that leads to an idea? If you come up with a new concept for a client, can you then use that same idea or concept for another client? How much of what you deliver is their intellectual property and how far do you have to go to protect your own intellectual property?

What prompted this chain of thought was a situation that arose with a client recently. One of their senior managers was using information gathered for the company to feed his personal blog about a semi-related topic. Was this theft of IP? Was this individual stealing IP from the company even though he wasn’t using it for competitive purposes or to make money from the data?

First, let’s consider what, exactly, is intellectual property. According to CSO magazine, IP can be broken down into four basic categories: patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. These are fairly straightforward concepts and the notion of protecting them is well-defined. But what about protecting an idea? As the CSO article states, “But IP can also be something broader and less tangible than these four protected classes: it can simply be an idea. If the head of your R&D department has a eureka moment during his morning shower and then applies his new idea at work, that’s intellectual property too.”

Intellectual property (IP) can be anything from a particular manufacturing process to plans for a product launch, a trade secret like a chemical formula, or a list of the countries in which your patents are registered. It may help to think of it as intangible proprietary information. The formal definition, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization is creations of the mind — inventions, literary and artistic works, symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce. IP includes but is not limited to proprietary formulas and ideas, inventions (products and processes), industrial designs, and geographic indications of source, as well as literary and artistic works such as novels, films, music, architectural designs and web pages.

So how far do you go to protect ideas as well as other creative products? Consider the case of the Winklevoss twins, who accused Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea when he created Facebook. They took their case to court and the outcome was never really satisfactorily decided. Did they lose a potential billions of dollars because Zuckerberg violated their intellectual property rights by stealing an idea? Who’s to say.

However, the concept of IP can place those of us who create material for clients in a quandary from time to time. For example, if I use proprietary information to help a client develop a new brand strategy, can I then take that same information and use it elsewhere for a similar project? If it creates a conflict of interest by helping a competitor, then ethically the answer is clearly “of course not,” but if you are using the same intellectual process or concepts to develop a non-competing brands…?

And consider the challenges of copyright infringement. When I write an article for publication on behalf of a client, the work belongs to the publication. In fact, I routinely ghostwrite magazine article for clients, and as part of the process we usually have to surrender the rights to the work to the magazine that prints it (or at least surrender first time serial rights). I often get questioned by my clients about this practice, since they want to use the article for other purposes as well. The publication certainly can copyright the article but they can’t copyright the ideas in the article. If the content is original (i.e. not plagiarized) then you can always rewrite it using the same ideas to create a new work.

And what about IP and blogging? It has become common practice to “borrow” content from other blogs and articles posted on the web and repost them to your blog with a fresh viewpoint. In the blogosphere, giving an acknowledgment to the original source and essentially saying “this is my take on someone else’s good idea” seems to be fair game. But what if you repurpose someone else’s blog content for your for-profit blog, essentially using someone else’s freely posted ideas to make money?

I think the question of abusing IP largely boils down to who profits? Who benefits from someone else’s intellectual property is the litmus test as to whether or not there is an IP infringement. If IP is tied to a specific brand, product, of process that is tied to profits, then it has real value and as property should be protected. That doesn’t mean there aren’t gray areas. Consider the case of a piece of software code that finds its way into a competing software product. The patent attorneys spend a lot of time and money trying to ascertain if a piece of code is unique and therefore intellectual property, or if it is a more generic expression of a machine instruction that can’t be legally protected.

As a consultant, I apply a simpler criteria. Clients own the end product but I own the process to create the product. If I create an article or a press release or even a brand strategy for a client, they own that material as a deliverable for which they contracted. However, the templates I use and the process behind the deliverable are my intellectual property, and I get to reuse it as part of my service and brand. if I deliver a crisis plan to a client, for example, the specifics and protocols in that plan are theirs. However, the format, templates, and process I use to generate that plan remain my IP. Their IP – the plan, or article, or white paper, or brand strategy – is a tangible asset that promotes profit for their company. The process to create the IP deliverable remains the secret sauce that allows us to provide value as communications professionals.

I’d love to hear your stories from the field on your struggles with IP. Please comment or drop me an email.

Tag: IP

“Hands Off My IP!”–Intellectual Property is Still Property