B. SELECT TOPICS IN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Criminalization of electronic intellectual property violations is gaining momentum around the world. The transformation of the Internet from its U.S. roots into a global medium is cause for concern for trademark owners interested in domain name registration and trademark protection. Intellectual property rights are territorial and the scope of national rights remains to a certain degree uncertain for digital works. (Joel R. Reidenberg, Lex Informatica: The Formulation Of Information Policy Rules Through Technology, 76 Tex. L. Rev. 553, 565 (February 1998).) Thus, works that are distributed or accessed internationally on the Internet face serious problems with the enforcement of intellectual property rights.
Technology provides Internet-wide mechanisms that enable intellectual property owners to distribute their works in ways that legal regulation finds problematic. Technical solutions can enable intellectual property owners to choose the type of protection they want. Labeling web pages in the transmission protocol can allow web-page developers to express their rules for distribution of the page. (Id. at 567.) Technical solutions show that network technology itself imposes rules for access to and use of intellectual property.
Technology, also, presents a valuable response to some of the legal-policy problems associated with the management of intellectual property rights. Application of the existing intellectual property regimes of copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret to the electronic world reveals problems similar to those found in the regulation of both content and information privacy. For example, technical copy protection can reverse the copyright law's fair use doctrine. The technology prevents the acquirer of the software to make duplications by establishing a read-only format; the law, in contrast, may have adopted a default rule permitting certain copying. (Id.)
Even U.S. government researchers have recommended that the Copyright Act be amended to prohibit any device that is designed to deactivate any technological protections used to prevent a violation of a copyright owner’s exclusive rights under the Copyright Act. (Secretary of Commerce Ronald H. Brown, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND THE NATIONAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE: THE REPORT OF THE WORKING GROUP ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS,) http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/doc/ipnii/execsum.html