Modern information systems can raise various legal and ethical issues in addition to those associated with intellectual property. After reading the selection, what are some of the most significant ethical challenges that professionals using and developing BI systems should consider? How do these ethical issues translate into specific laws and regulations? Is the legal structure keeping up with the development of new technology?
Patent
Patents are another important form of intellectual property protection. A patent creates protection for someone who invents a new product or process. The definition of invention is quite broad and covers many different fields. Here are some examples of items receiving patents:
- circuit designs in semiconductors;
- prescription drug formulas;
- firearms;
- locks;
- plumbing;
- engines;
- coating processes; and
- business processes.
Once a patent is granted it provides the inventor with protection from others infringing on his or her patent. A patent holder has the right to "exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States for a limited time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention when the patent is granted".
As with copyright, patent protection lasts for a limited period of
time before the invention or process enters the public domain. In
the US, a patent lasts twenty years. This is why generic drugs are
available to replace brand-name drugs after twenty years.
Obtaining Patent Protection
Unlike copyright, a patent is not automatically granted when someone has an interesting idea and writes it down. In most countries a patent application must be submitted to a government patent office. A patent will only be granted if the invention or process being submitted meets certain conditions.
- Must be original. The invention being submitted must not have been submitted before.
- Must be non-obvious. You cannot patent something that anyone could think of. For example, you could not put a pencil on a chair and try to get a patent for a pencil-holding chair.
- Must be useful. The invention being submitted must serve some purpose or have some use that would be desired.
The job of the patent office is to review patent applications to ensure that the item being submitted meets these requirements. This is not an easy job. In 2017 the US Patent Office granted 318,849 patents, an increase of 5.2% over 2016. The current backlog for a patent approval is 15.6 months. Information Technology firms have applied for a significant number of patents each year. Here are the top five I.T. firms in terms of patent applications filed since 2009. The percent indicate the percent of total I.T. patents filed since 2009. Notice that over half of patent filings come from just these five corporations.
- International Business Machines (IBM) 21.6%
- Microsoft Corporation 14.2%
- AT & T, Inc. 7.1%
- Alphabet (Google), Inc. 5.0%
- Sony Corporation 4.7%
You might have noticed that Apple is not in the top five listing.
Microsoft holds the lead in Artificial Intelligence (AI) patents.