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11 Conn. Law. 4 (2000-2001)
E-Business 101 - Part V: Intellectual Property

handle is hein.barjournals/conlyr0011 and id is 298 raw text is: E-Business 1 01 Part V: Intellectual Property By Myles H. Alderman, Jr. and Scott B. Allison INTRODUCTION Most companies have more intellectual property assets than they or their competi- tors realize. Increasingly, disputes regard- ing copyrights, trademarks, patented tech- nology and domain names are appearing in courts and receiving significant media attention, especially those disputes involv- ing one or nore e-busincsses.' InI sole cases, litigation is merely one of many tools used to maximize the return of a company's investment in its intellectual property. In order to maximize the value of the intellectual property, lawyers first need to recognize the intellectual property owned by their clients. With this informa- tion lawyers can explore licensing, mar- keting and standard setting avenues. Two of the three main branches of intellectual property law-copyright and patent-attempt to balance two apparently conflicting interests. On one side, these laws are designed to stimulate creativity and innovation by granting intellectual property rights as an incentive to authors and inventors. On the other side, these laws attempt to protect the public's inter- est by limiting the duration of copyright and patent rights. Because of the rapid rate of change in the world of e-business, a World Wide Web site (web site) provides fertile ground for misunderstanding and disputes related to copyright and patent assets as well as trademarks, tile third main branch of intellectual property.2 COPYRIGHTS Copyright law provides protection for original works ofauthorship, including lit- erary, audiovisual and many other types of works.' Computer software is classified as a literary work for purposes of U.S. copy- right law. Copyright law prevents unau- thorized copying or distribution.' Copy- right law protects only the particular expression of an idea as opposed to tile idea itself. Copyright in an original work of authorship is created automatically when the work is fixed in a tangible medium of expression.' There are many aspects of an e-busi- ness' web site that might be protected by copyright. The web site might include ele- ments suIch as textual content, still images. photographs, animations and sounds. An element included on a web page might be protected individually by copyright if the element is sufficiently original and creative. For example, the web site of the USA Toda, newspaper (wwwttsatotlacom) includes many sepa- rate and distinct articles, each of which may be protected by copyright. The mul- ticolored top bar of the home page of the web site of iWon, Inc., the sweepstakes based portal found at www.iwon.com, may be protected by copyright. Even if some or all of the elements of a web page are not protected by copyright individually, the selection, arrangement and layout of the elements on the web page, or the so-called look and feel of the web page, might be protected by copy- right.' For example, the selection and lay- out of buttons, icons, badges, banners, hyperlinks or text material may, in some cases, be sufficiently original and creative to warrant copyright protection. A web page typically is programmed using a standard coding language called IITML (Hlypcrtext Markup Language). When a user downloads the web page, browser software operating on tile user's computer interprets the HTML code to determine how to display the web page on the user's computer. The IITML code underlying the web page may be protected by copyright. For some web sites, sophis- ticated software based on CGI or other programming techniques may be used to build all or part of a web page dynani- cally when a user accesses tile web page or uses a feature of the web site. In addition, such software may provide features and capabilities to the web site, some of which may be tran:parent to a visitor to the web site. For example, software might be used to prepare e-mails for distribution, to tar- get or select advertisements for display on a web site, or to provide customer service or request information from a visitor to a web site. While such back end software may not be part of the HTML program- muing for a web page, the software may be protected by copyright separately from the copyright, if any, protecting tile HTML coding of the web site. The ownership of a copyright should not be confused with ownership of a phys- ical copy embodying the copyright.' For example, a person may own a copy of a book without owning tile copyrights to the story told in the book. Put another way, owning the book does not give tile book owner permission to make copies of the book. The ownership rights to the tangible (Please see page 6) * MAY 2001 CONNECTICUT LAWYER Visit It'lo.ctha~org

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