When a person creates his/her own original work, whether it's a piece of
art, a written story, software, hardware, etc., it automatically becomes that
person's intellectual property, who, by default, owns rights to its
reproduction and distribution. There are two types of intellectual property:
registered and unregistered.
- Registered intellectual property gives the owner rights over the monopoly of the concept. Examples include patents, trademarks, design rights, domain rights and plant breeder rights.
- Unregistered intellectual property only prevents others from copying the concept. Unregistered trademarks, copyright and database rights are all unregistered (Wilson, 2011).
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In
the sphere of software development it is very common for a person who writes a
program's code to transfer some or all rights to his/her client. The usual way
of handling the ownership of an intellectual property is through a contract or
any other written agreement between the developer and the client which is
supported by law. When making a contract, because you own your original work,
you can assign to the client as few or as many rights as you want. For example,
you can assign rights to use the software only in certain geographic regions
(U.S. only), or for specific periods of time. You can also control whether the
client is allowed to modify your work or license/sell your work to a
third-party without your approval (Kimbarovsky, 2009).
Kimbarovsky,
R. (2009). Contracts. Retrieved March 22, 2015, from
http://rosskimbarovsky.com/contracts-for-software-and-website-developers.pdf
Wilson,
K. (2011, June 3). What is the Difference between Registered and Non-Registered
Intellectual Property? Retrieved March 22, 2015, from
http://www.hawkip.com/advice/what-is-the-difference-between-registered-and-non-registered-intellectual-property
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