Intellectual Property Rights Less Cut & Dried in the Cloud

Intellectual property rights have been an issue for a good long while now, and perhaps the biggest problem when it comes to this field is that each side has at least one good point to its credit. But while the debate rages on in terms of things like fair use and parody and similar matters, one key point has cropped up that has changed the nature of a great many debates before it, and likely many more to come after it. Specifically, it's the nature of cloud computing, and the kind of impact it's having on intellectual property discussions.

On the surface, intellectual property debates should be cut and dried. Users create content, and should someone else seek to put that content to work, the original creator should be compensated or credited accordingly. But when the cloud comes into play, there's a lot more rapid movement of ideas, and original ownership can be lost in the shuffle, a matter won or lost in the seconds. Indeed, since the total number of players in the field is so small, some actually won't seek patents for some inventions, particularly given what could be revealed about future developments from said patents.

Issues of complexity are a big part of the whole issue, as carmakers are discovering. While most carmakers are familiar with those who own the intellectual property involved in a braking system or exhaust system, the property rights behind components of a connected car are much different. It's not just cars, either, as cloud systems open up the potential to bring in technology from completely different markets to augment current systems. Throw in the idea of a globally-interconnected marketplace and suddenly the situation changes again.

Yet at the same time, there's even some contribution to this by companies seeking an advantage in the marketplace. For instance, the use of open-source software is often brought into play, allowing companies to make a product, and make it quickly, by drawing on several different sources of established work at once. HP, for example, is out to out Amazon in terms of cloud services, and has brought together 400 engineers to drive things like OpenStack, along with networking and automation tools, and clear indemnification against patent lawsuits for users. Bill Hilf, who oversees the OpenStack project, described how such a project was proving problematic, saying “They (HP's lawyers) have to protect a product that is being changed all the time by people who don't work for HP.”

Throw in the idea of 3D printing, and the like on to open-source software and the result is what Stanford Law professor Mark Lemley describes as “...a world where most of the things we produce are cheap or free...”. An increase of software going open source, issues of piracy, and the ability to put the cloud to use to replicate or otherwise slightly alter things is proving a difficult one in which to produce. One of the greatest reasons to produce is to yield profit, but when that profit can be bled off to at least some extent by those modifying an item to produce something comparatively different, how far can a creator reasonably protect his or her own operation?

These are questions that are likely to plague users for some time to come, and likely won't have easy answers, either. But these are also questions that represent change and growth, and may give us a future better than anyone expected.