Multimedia Production and IPR
Multimedia Production and Intellectual Property Rights
A Kuro Panel Discussion
Coordinated by DabaweGNU
(c/o Holden Hao) – Davao City
2 December 2006, 1:00 – 5:00 pm
DabaweGNU, Inc., Davao City
Download Davao_Transcript (PDF)
HIGHLIGHTS
Mr. Holden Hao gave a presentation on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). He first defined IPR as legal entitlements attached to certain types of information, ideas and other intangibles in their expressed forms. He then proceeded with the different types of IPR. Among these types are copyrights, patents, and trademarks. To distinguish the three, a trademark is a distinctive sign used to protect a brand or a logo. A patent, on the other hand, is used to protect an idea while a copyright is a legal right of the expression of that idea.
Mr. Hao moved on with the IPR system in the Philippines. He mentioned that the law on the Philippine IPR system was passed in 1997 and that this law is more restrictive than before. On of the limitations of the Intellectual Property Code is that it does not allow the patenting of computer programs or software, mathematical methods and scientific discoveries. Mr. Hao also mentioned that in cases of employees creating Intellectual Property (IP) for their company though it is not the official function of the employee, the IP belongs to the employee. On the other hand, if the employer told the employee to create such IP, then the IP belongs to the company.
A discussion on Free and Open Source Software licenses, multimedia production and conditions of Creative Common Licenses was also carried out by Mr. Hao, while the participants were encouraged to ask questions during his presentation.
Mr. Nathaniel Jayme also gave a talk on the multimedia applications under Linux. He began by clarifying what a free software is. According to Mr. Jayme, when a software is free, it actually means four things, namely: the freedom to do what you want with the software, the freedom to study the source code, the freedom to modify the source code, and the freedom to distribute your modification to others. Hence, even if it is a free software, the software can still be sold as long as it satisfies the four principles mentioned.
Towards the latter part of Mr. Jayme’s presentation, he enumerated various multimedia applications under Linux, according to categories such as free codecs, media players and readers, internet radio clients, document readers, multimedia authoring tools, video apps, still images and animation, desktop publishing, Machinima, multimedia conversion tools, publishing and media content, among others.
Finally, during the open forum, there was a proposal to shorten the number of years of patents. Currently, patents are granted to protect the owner for 20 years, after the first four years of which, the patent must be renewed.