BCOR 320 1nd Edition Lecture 17 Chaper 28 Cont Remedies a court may Prohibit the infringer from further violations Destroy infringing material and Require the infringer to pay damages Fair Use The doctrine of fair use permits limited use of copyrighted material without permission of the author for purposes such as criticism comment news reporting scholarship parady or research Downloads of music files from the Internet as with Grokster Napster or MP3 com is NOT within the bounds of fair use No Electric Theft Act Provides for criminal penalties for the reproduction or distribution of copyrighted material with a value of over 1 000 even if the offender has no profit motives The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act Makes it illegal to use a camcorder to film a movie in a theater and establishes criminal penalties for willful copyright infringement involving the distribution of software music or film on a computer network Internet Digital Millennium Copyright Act Makes it illegal to delete copyright information such as the author s name and then distribute the work via the internet It is also illegal to circumvent encryption or scrambling devices It is illegal to distribute tools and technologies used to circumvent encryption devices International Copyright treaties The Berne Convention requires member countries to provide automatic copyright protection to any works created in another member country Trademark A trademark is any combination of words and symbols that a business uses to distinguish products or services Types of Marks Trademark Service mark Certification mark Collective marks Ownership and registration These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute First person to use a mark in trade owns it Registration is not necessary but does have some advantages Allows owner to use the symbol Makes trademark protection valid nationally Notifies public of its use which makes challenges virtually moot Increases damage awards available Generally gives first right to use the trademark as an Internet domain name Valid trademarks To be valid a trademark must be distinctive To be valid a trademark cannot be Too similar to an existing mark A generic word such as shoe A descriptive word such as crunchy A person s name alone Deceptive scandalous or immoral Sometimes a valid trademark loses its validity if it is used so much that it becomes a generic name Ex zipper escalator yo yo Domain Names Internet addresses domain names were originally assigned with no cost Now domain names are bought and sold sometimes for enormous amounts of money and sometimes sold by people who originally registered those names for free If a domain name infringes on a registered trademark the domain name will be suspended immediately if the trademark owner challenges it Conflict of domain names The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act permits trademark owners and famous people to sue anyone who registers their name as a domain name in bad faith Domain names are now regulated by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ICANN which settles disputes by arbitration International Laws Some treaties and other agreements protect copyrights and trademarks worldwide These include Paris Convention Patent Cooperation Treaty Berne Convention WIPO Copyright Treaty Madrid Agreement Trademark Law Treaty Trade secrets A trade secret is a formula device process method or compilation of information that used in business gives the owner an advantage over competitors who do not know it To decide if something is a trade secret How difficult was the information to obtain Does it create an economic advantage Does the company protect it Uniform trade secrets Owner of a secret must take reasonable precaution to protect it Defendant must have acquired a trade secret through unlawful means Trade secrets Misappropriation of a trade secret is a civil tort action to recover Profits made by the offender from use of trade secret Damages Injunction Reverse engineering Competitor who reverse engineers a product can use trade secret but not the trade marked name of the original creator Economic espionage act A federal statute that makes it a crime for any person to convert a trade secret for his or her own or another s benefit knowing or intending to cause injury to the owners of the trade secret EEA provides severe criminal penalties Prison terms up to 15 years per criminal violation Fines up to 10 million per criminal violation