Intellectual Property Policy Memo

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Purpose
This policy memorandum is intended to provide general guidance to CompanyA employees on how to use copyright protection to protect intellectual property (IP) rights.

Part 1 Copyright in general
A Copyright is a legal right that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights to its use and distribution. Our Founding Fathers provided for the establishment of a Copyright system in the U.S. Constitution to provide financial incentives to writers, artists, and others to promote the creation of new works. Copyrights are generally owned by the people who create the works; however, if a work is created by an employee in the course of his or her employment, the employer is the legal author and owns the copyright. Therefore CompanyA …show more content…

The public can view the copyright protected work on deposit, but only in person with approval via written request submitted to the Copyright Office. Doesn’t this public availability jeopardize the CompanyA Proprietary trade secret information contained in our technical documents?

No. A variety of procedures have been established by the Copyright Office to allow companies to register copyrights for unpublished works while still protecting their proprietary information. First and foremost CompanyA Proprietary Information should be redacted from the document prior to registering. The copyright office allows up to 49% of the document to be redacted. Further, while the public can view the redacted work on deposit, no copies or photos are allowed during viewing; and a Copyright Office representative is present to ensure that any notes taken do not include copies of the …show more content…

From an ideological standpoint, however, both patent and copyright laws have the potential to offer some degree of protection to the various components that comprise the entirety of a software program. Thus, copyright protection to prevent wholesale copying of software may be the most reliable way to protect CompanyA’s rights in software although, when available, patent protection offers stronger remedies and may be preferred, where available.

Suppliers, Consultants and “Works for Hire”
When CompanyA hires an outside vendor to develop software or technical documentation, it usually does so with the expectation that it will own the resulting work. To achieve this, the Company should whenever possible negotiate license agreements or secure copyright assignments from suppliers and consultants, including the use of “work made for hire” agreements assigning the copyrights to CompanyA. Absent such an agreement the copyright will belong to the author of the work.

PART 3 Summary/Conclusions

1. All technical documents created by CompanyA are protected by Copyright and should be marked with the following copyright

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