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Intellectual Property News
Users May Be Unaware Of Threats From Filesharing Programs
The Department of Commerce’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has released a report that concludes that the distributors of five popular filesharing programs repeatedly deployed features that they knew or should have known could cause users to share files inadvertently. The report, Filesharing Programs and “Technological Features to Induce Users to Share,” identifies five features in recent versions of five popular filesharing programs that could cause users to inadvertently distribute to others downloaded files or their own proprietary or sensitive files.
“Computer programs that can cause unintended filesharing contribute to copyright infringement, and they threaten the security of personal, corporate, and governmental data,” noted Jon Dudas, under secretary of commerce for intellectual property—the Bush Administration’s point person on copyright policy.
The report shows that distributors of filesharing programs deployed features that could cause inadvertent sharing even after repeated warnings that these features could facilitate identity theft and breaches of personal and national security. For example, in 2003, two Congressional hearings were prompted by research indicating inadvertent sharing could be caused by search-wizard and share-folder features. After the hearings, many distributors adopted a Code of Conduct that prohibited use of these features. Nevertheless, in 2004 and 2005, many of these same distributors kept deploying more aggressive versions of search-wizard or share-folder features. Many distributors also deployed other features, like partial-uninstall and coerced-sharing features, that also had a known or obvious potential to cause inadvertent sharing. Read more at uspto.gov.
Definition:
A certification mark is any word, name, symbol, device, or any combination, used, or intended to be used, in commerce with the owner’s permission by someone other than its owner, to certify regional or other geographic origin, material, mode of manufacture, quality, accuracy, or other characteristics of someone's goods or services, or that the work or labor on the goods or services was performed by members of a union or other organization.
Public domain
Definition:
Public domain refers to works that are not protected by copyright and are publicly available. They may be used by anyone, anywhere, anytime without permission, license or royalty payment
Copyright owner
Definition:
With respect to any one of the exclusive rights comprised in a copyright, refers to the owner of that particular right. The exclusive rights provided by Copyright are completely divisible. Copyright in a work vests initially in the author or authors of the work. However, the author may assign some or all of his or her rights to another, e.g., to a publisher, if the work has appeared in a formal publication, who then becomes the owner of the rights assigned.
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