Business Issues & Ethics – Lecture 7 Key Notes

Intellectual Property

• Bundle of rights over creations of the mind; can be shared without loss.
• Main legal protections: trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights, patents (see sections below).

Trademarks

• Any word, name, symbol, or device identifying source of goods.
• Do not expire; rights last indefinitely while mark is used.
• Registration advantages: national enforcement, searchable database, blocks counterfeit imports.
• Legal systems: first-to-use (e.g., USA, Canada) vs. first-to-file (e.g., China, EU).
• Infringement = deceptive similarity; violates duty not to misrepresent.

Trade Secrets

• Right to keep valuable information confidential; protection ends once revealed.
• Indicators of protectability:
  • 1 security measures taken
  • 2 development cost
  • 3 value to competitors
• Must balance employer secrecy claims with employee speech/mobility and public right to know.

Copyrights

• Protect the written or recorded expression of ideas; arise automatically.
• Exclusive rights: reproduction, derivative works, distribution, public performance & display.
• Covers novels, music, software, databases, plans, etc.
• In Hong Kong, term = 50 years after author’s death.

Patents

• Protect inventions, machines, processes, compositions of matter.
• Requirements: useful, novel, non-obvious.
• Rights: exclude others from making, using, selling until patent expiry; reverse engineering allowed (but no direct copying).
• Application must include full description, drawings, claims; maintenance fees required.
• Ethical weight varies by industry (e.g., life-saving drugs vs. convenience goods).

Fair Use

• Limited, no-permission use of copyrighted material for criticism, comment, news, teaching, scholarship, research.
• Four factors: purpose/character, nature of work, amount/substantiality, market effect.

Business & Computers

• IT introduces issues in crime, responsibility, privacy, and work patterns.

Computer Crime

• 3 main forms: theft of funds/assets, theft of information, theft of computer time/access.
• Malware (viruses, worms) universally condemned; spam largely viewed as intrusive.

Corporate Responsibility for IT

• Humans, not machines, bear moral responsibility for computer-related harms.

Computers & Privacy

• Firms collect customer data (locations, history) and employee data (emails, device metrics).
• Key privacy types: information, electronic, physical, psychological.
• Ownership of personal data, confidentiality duties, and ethics of data mining remain contested.
• Legally, corporate hardware → company property; employee email generally not private.

Changing Nature of Work

• Enabled by IT: flextime, teleworking, virtual organizations, overseas outsourcing.
• Expert systems & AI may replace roles by 2030.
• Digital divide dimensions: rich/poor societies, individuals, age groups, computer literacy.