Intellectual Property Law 101
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Arc (geometry)Design of experimentsOpen sourceRule of inferenceSoftwareProjective planeExpressionMultiplication signCodeDeclarative programmingAxiom of choiceFormal languagePublic domainCategory of beingCASE <Informatik>Software developerWordStandard deviationDeterminismRight anglePower (physics)Domain nameLimit (category theory)Derivation (linguistics)FreewarePerspective (visual)Area1 (number)Open setType theoryDesign by contractDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Graphical user interfaceGame theoryFrequencyExponential functionData conversionLaptopCoefficient of determinationCuboidDistribution (mathematics)Physical lawTerm (mathematics)Computer animation
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Case moddingLattice (order)Roundness (object)Different (Kate Ryan album)Multiplication signLecture/ConferenceComputer animation
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:04
Have you had enough caffeine? Because it's a Python conference, and I'm going to give a talk on intellectual property law. And in front of a room full of developers. It is a dream for me, but I think it's mostly
00:24
a nightmare for many of you. But I captured you, so I'm going to blabber for the next 29 minutes. And you have to bear with me. But before I start, as I always do, let me tell you a story.
00:45
So it was 2012, my first PyCon, PyCon India. I actually went there to support my dear husband. I was a lawyer, a mortgage attorney, a serious one, back then. And I didn't have any connection with technology whatsoever.
01:05
Now I went. And as a lawyer, I'm used to going to these very posh conferences, where people are dressed in their best suit. And I'm used to these cheese and wine parties, where even if you can't stand someone, then also we say,
01:24
I beg to differ, and very politely. And here, I am at this conference where people are having disagreement, and they're shouting, and they're fighting, and they're laughing while they are working on a code.
01:40
Oh my god, it was an apocalypse for me. And people were actually wearing their torn jeans and some old conference t-shirt and showing it as badge of honor. I didn't understand that. Now, in that conference, whenever I was giving my introduction as, hey, I'm a lawyer,
02:01
people were like, oh my god, OK, she's a lawyer. Be scared. Either they were very scared of me, or they were just not including me in the conversation. Now, I could realize at that point of time that I don't belong there. And for the last eight years, I'm
02:21
trying very hard to belong here. I understand. And why did I want to belong? Because I understand that I understood back then that law and technology, these are two very important forces which is going to build our future.
02:42
So I thought of creating a bridge. So here we are at PyCon, at a PyCon, at EuroPython. And we will be trying to build that bridge. Because we are in an era of technology where these very two strong forces
03:02
need to work in a synergy to create a better future. Law needs to get amended to suit the technology. And technology needs to follow the rule of law, whether you like it or not. This is our future.
03:22
So now, I had, as my talk, if you go outside, you'll see that my talk is intellectual property law 101. But when I showed the slide, it was intellectual property 101. I actually not included law, not to scare you in the talk
03:42
so that you don't run away from the talk. But I had this word, intellectual property. So what is intellectual property? Let us understand it. But before that, a little bit introduction of the storyteller. Hi, I'm Anvesha.
04:00
I'm a lawyer by education and technologist by passion. I work at Red Hat in the Ansible Community Engineering team as a software engineer. I am a Python Software Foundation fellow. I help communities, free and open source communities,
04:21
around the globe with my technical, legal, and organizational skills. And I'm a proud, proud PyLady. I have led PyLady's efforts in India. And then now, I am an organizer at PyLady Stockholm. I maintain my blog at anveshadas.in.
04:40
And definitely, after my intro, I have no liberty to say that I am not a lawyer. Because I am a lawyer, but not your lawyer. Therefore, this talk should not be considered as a legal advice. Now, there was a heavy, vague term,
05:05
English phrase, which we were talking about, intellectual property, remember? So what is this intellectual property? Intellectual property, as very much evident from the definition itself, that it protects the invention created by intellect
05:21
through some codified law. Now, these are the assets created by human intellect, human mind. Now, wait. We are protecting something like human mind, which you cannot see or touch. Then how come we are doing it?
05:42
Here comes the twist. Law protects both the things which you can touch and which you cannot touch, which has a physical presence and which does not have a physical presence. So land, property, then apartments,
06:02
bungalows, which most of us developers don't have, are tangible property, and intellectual property falls under the category of intangible property. Now, why does law intend to protect intellectual property?
06:20
Why do we have this genre of law? Because through protecting intellectual property, law is trying to encourage and develop and foster the environment of creativity and innovation. Now, there are different types of intellectual property.
06:42
We are not going to discuss all of them, but we will go through. The first one is patents, then copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, industrial design, and geographical indications.
07:02
Now, for our talk today, we are only going to cover first three of them, patents, copyright, and trademark. Now, the first one in the list, which we are going to discuss, is trademark. And I can see Mark in front of me. Can you think how scared I am to give a talk on trademark
07:24
in front of Mark? So OK, nobody could get the joke, but you will. Able to get it? At least I could see Mark and Carol and Naomi smiling. So OK, three people did.
07:41
So what is trademark? Trademark is a type of intellectual property consisting of recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies a product or service from a, like, distinguishes a product or service from a particular source and distinguishes it from others
08:04
as well, like identifies it and distinguishes it. And that was legal. Now, let us figure out what trademark is in a human language. A trademark is a sign that is capable of distinguishing goods and services of one enterprise from another enterprise.
08:25
So it is easier for us to distinguish whether this, who is the maker of this laptop, from the trademark, which is written somewhere here. This is not my laptop, so I can't see.
08:41
There are the stickers, yes. And these are not my stickers also. These are Pie Ladies. So we know what Pie Ladies is. You won't think it's a soft drink company. Or this is a beautiful woman, but she is not posing for something else but for code.
09:02
Now, to declare trademark, there are a few symbols which is associated with it. We are going to discuss about it, but a little later. I just showed you two trademark, two individual stickers, one Pie Ladies and two Pie Ladies, both the Pie Ladies ones. Now, so who owns those?
09:23
PSF, Python Software Foundation, owns these trademarks and those logos. Now, we were talking about, we were talking about certain symbols, and who protects them? So do you know, or how many of you know, and Mark does not get
09:43
to answer this, that PSF runs a trademark committee? Okay. Yes, that is why people were not getting the joke. So there's a trademark committee, which is run by, there are four of us, Mark, David, Iqbal, and me.
10:03
And this is one of the most active committee, I would say. The average response time in the committee is, if you mail them, it's almost 40 minutes. So it's 40 minutes, and there are many times
10:21
when I think that I'm going to reply, and I type something, and then I come from the washroom, from a bio break, and I see that's done, because it's so fast, and we are really, really active. It's all because of Mark and David, and thank you for doing it so relentlessly for such a long time.
10:41
Actually, I would like to thank you for all the work and answering the same questions again and again. Now, what does this PSF trademark committee do? The PSF trademark committee aims to protect the consumers, rather than the trademark owner.
11:01
So the PSF trademark committee is for all of us. It's not for PSF. So who are the consumers of Python? We are the consumers of Python, the community, the developers, the users. We are the consumers. Therefore, the trademark committee is there to help us,
11:20
and also to protect certain policies which is there so that our community is not confused. Our trademarks are not being misused. Now, as I said, and I was talking
11:40
about PSF's trademark committee without changing the slide. Great. So PSF's trademark committee, as I was saying, in PSF's trademark committee, if you have questions relating to logos, if you have questions relating to anything related to trademark, please go and find this wonderful FAQ page.
12:01
Go there, read it. If it is not answered, then only. And I really urge, because I always see that there are same questions which is already answered in the FAQ are being asked in the trademark committee. So, and then you can go and ask these legal experts.
12:23
So now, that reminds me, the Python Software Foundation vote for the board is going on. If you haven't casted your vote, please consider casting it. It helps our community to grow and sustain. Now, we were talking about certain symbols, right?
12:41
We were talking about certain symbols. So, if we go back and check it over here, that we can see that if you can see that there is the small TM over there, so that is, so there are various signs which says that this trademark,
13:02
whether this trademark is registered or not. If you can see that there is one R in the round sign, then that is registered under U.S. Patent Office, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Now, if you see TM, this is, this declares a trademark,
13:20
but it is not registered as yet. Let's see, so and the SM, which is service mark, which is not like, which stands for the service. Now, for Europe, you can apply for trademark, like different countries,
13:41
different country has different jurisdiction, and they have separate trademark office. You can go and apply for your trademark over there. Now, if we want to summarize the whole conversation, there is one very important thing, which we need to remember. I just showed you that this is mark, which is, this is,
14:04
like these are the trademarks, and you have to remember the symbols. But this is not, this is not universal. This is very territorial and jurisdictional. What is law in U.S., and what is law in Europe,
14:21
and many other countries in Europe, are not similar or same. So if we want to summarize the whole conversation, patent is some, we grant a trademark to understand that how are my product is different from someone else's, right?
14:42
And what is patent? The next stop is patent, because patent actually is granted over the idea, but not, so trademark is there to support the source, and patent is there to support,
15:00
or to support and protect the idea. Now, what is patent? The word patent is originated from the word latest patent, as opposed to the closed letter, these were letters, signed and sealed by King of England, by and through these open letters, the King of England,
15:21
used to give certain rights to its subjects. Now, so here are the letters from which the subject is to get certain rights. If you think it in the same way, patent gives certain rights to certain people.
15:41
Now, who are these people, and what is the definition of patent? The definition of patent says, patent is an exclusive monopoly right over the idea, the right which is granted to the innovator by the sovereign, or the, any other authority, for a limited period of time.
16:05
Now, here are four things which we need to discuss. The first one being idea. Patent is granted over the idea, idea of the invention.
16:21
So, when, if you're thinking about curl, think like this way, that patent protects the idea behind curl, that is the transferring data over internet, not the code base itself.
16:40
For an idea that, for an idea to be patented or patentable, the idea needs to be novel and new. The next one is, the next one is monopoly. Patent is an exclusive right to offer the inventor,
17:01
unless there is some other agreement, there are some other agreement with some other, some other party. Patent is a monopoly right of the inventor. Now, the next one is sovereign. So, sovereign means the authority in here.
17:23
When we are talking about authority, it means that there are few government bodies, generally sovereign is the government, who makes the laws. Now, there are certain government bodies from where you can apply for the patent.
17:46
Now, in this case, in Europe, it's the EU Commission has a patent office, also every country has a patent office itself, and for U.S., it is the U.S. Patent
18:00
and Trademark Office which issues the patent. And the last one, the last one, the last one being, the last one is a limited period that is granted,
18:20
is the limited period that is granted for a limited period of time. Like, the patent is not for eternity, it is a time bound thing, it is a time bound thing and it is different from the trademark. So, the, and why this is time bound and why trademark is not time bound?
18:41
Because trademark was, what was trademark doing? Trademark was protecting the source, the source will be same but the idea should be used by other people once it is, or once that time is over. So, now someone's showed me that I have only 10 minutes left,
19:02
I have to be very fast. Now, here are, so patent has certain risks, so open, patent has certain risk, legal risk, it is time consuming, you have to pay for it. So, there is a network of, there's a network
19:22
and there's an organization which we need to take note. It's called Open Invention Network, it is an organization of different multinational, different multinational companies and patent owners. This is where they are coming together under one roof to safeguard open source from patent risk
19:43
and Open Invention Network is the largest patent non-aggression community. And here I'm very, very proud that my employer, Red Hat, is a part of OIN, Open Invention Network. Now, patent protects the idea and the invention of the,
20:04
and the invention itself and the new process is protected by copyright. So, what is copyright? If we flip the word copyright, it is, it comes as the right over a copy or right to copy.
20:22
Here's the definition of copyright goes like this, copyright is an exclusive right to distribute, sell the original creation granted for a limited period of time. Again, we remember from patent, buy again the sovereign, the government has the power to issue the copyright.
20:44
Now, you do not need to apply for copyright. Then if you do not like, as we were discussing trademark and patent, we actually had to go and apply for trademark and patent. Now, if we want to, now, if we don't have to apply
21:01
for copyright, then how come we are getting copyright? We are getting copyright through software licenses. Software licenses, this is a very, very familiar term. Now, software licenses is the declaration rather than, you can say it's a declaration rather than agreement,
21:22
which a developer is going to have or intends to have with its user. Now, when you are attaching a software license to your code base, to your project, what you are doing, you are actually saying you can do these many five things
21:41
with my project and you cannot do these many ten things with my project, and if you want to use it, you have to abide by these rules. Now, there are many times when we think how come software is copyrighted?
22:00
Because we generally think the literary work, the paintings and the artistic work, those are protected by copyright, but how come this intellectual property is coming and bothering us, the coders? The developers, when you develop something, it's an idea you're developing which is patentable,
22:22
now, the next, and you are writing a code. How you write is your choice, is your expression. The language you choose is your choice and your expression. This particular two things, choice and expression makes you, us, code poet.
22:41
Isn't it cool? Now, we need to discuss about what are the different types of copyright. And if, sorry, different types of software licenses. Now, if, for the, so that the discussion becomes a little
23:00
easy, we need to divide the discussion into the, we need to divide all the software licenses in the way they, in the following category, like how much right they are giving to the user and how much it is retaining to, for the developer or the people who are holding the copyright.
23:22
Now, the first one is the proprietary licenses. Proprietary licenses is the most restrictive ones. It gives very specific restrictive rights to the users. Now, how can, how we abide by, like how we sign the contract for this proprietary license.
23:45
We sign a contract called EULA, end user's license agreement. How do we do it? We can do it by clicking on GUI or we can just obtain it and get it from there. And also, it's for a limited period of time.
24:02
Many of the gaming software which has EULA, just by opening the box, you are abiding, you are agreeing to abide by those rules of EULA. So, and that is called shrink wrap, wrap licensing. Okay. The other, if one perspective is proprietary
24:24
license, the other one is public domain. And the public domain, as the names suggested, when the, it is in the, it is in the domain of public, it is in the area of public. It is safe for the public to use. How can some work can be on public domain?
24:43
You can very specifically mention that it is under public domain. You declared it or the copyright has been expired. After 20 years, we were discussing, after 20 years of time, when the copyright is expired, it comes under public domain.
25:01
And also, copyright is different. The time limitation for copyright is different from one country to another. And even if, like, if there are places where you cannot apply for, like, submit something
25:22
in public domain directly, then you can actually opt for creative comments, zero, or opt for unlicensed.org. And here comes our way, the open source way. Though, because my, I run a Linux laptop,
25:42
it was not possible to connect it. But our way is open source way, and we are in our open source conference. So, among the, so what is open source? Open source is a, open source is in the middle. So, if you see, there is public domain,
26:02
and there is proprietary licenses. Open source is somewhere in the middle. So, and the definition of open source is maintained by Open Source Initiative, OSI. Among many of the 10 promises, what open source licenses give, is the free distribution, open source code, and make your own derivative
26:20
for making your own derivative work are some significant ones. So, let's divide the open source licenses, and I'm going to just touch base it. If you want to listen to the talk in a detailed way, please grab me in the hallway. Because I have exhausted all the time. The permissive licenses, as the name suggests,
26:43
these are highly permissive licenses. What are the, and these give very many rights. What are the examples of permissive licenses? MIT and BSD. MIT, we all, because it is much similar to another variant of another open source license, which is expat license
27:02
and so many people like me refer MIT as expat license. But, so these are all highly permissive licenses. The next one, just lesser permissive license, and that is Apache. Apache has a patent grant clause.
27:21
Now, I think you will be able to connect the patent grant clause, and like how they are interrelated. Then, there is a reciprocal license. What is a, a reciprocal license is a license where you have some duties in reciprocity. You have to do certain things.
27:41
The example of reciprocal license is a new general public license. It is an example of copyleft license and best practices. So, when you are choosing a license, you are actually choosing your community. So, and your use case. So, choose a license for your use case.
28:02
Do not go and say that I follow this, so I am choosing it. I'm an ardent follower of MIT, so I will choose MIT for every project. No, choose a license which are based on your use case. And most importantly, do not invent your own license.
28:23
This is very, very important. There was a license which says, buy me a, if you want to use this code, buy me a beer. So, that doesn't happen. I don't know where that person is to buy a beer. And how costly is the beer over there? If it is Norway, then I'm doomed. So, to continue this conversation,
28:42
Carolina is giving a talk towards standards, towards licensing standardization in Python packaging. Now, I really urge you to go there because it might, you might think that this topic, intellectual property, is not important.
29:00
It is important and it has serious issues. It is creating serious problem. Please go and attend Carolina's talk. And here I am ending my talk. If you want to listen to licensing, please come to me and fetch me and grab me in the hallways. I know, Mahe, I'll just take one minute because I want
29:23
to share something very close to my heart today. I'm battling mental health issues. I'm suffering from anxiety and depression. I have a bowl full of ice here just to remind me that I'm not dead or I will not be dead.
29:40
It is to give me shock. And if you are facing it, it actually took me a lot of courage to stand here and give this talk. And if you are facing it, you're not alone. Thank you so much.
30:11
Thank you, Anvesha, for a great talk. I specifically liked how you explained the difference between copyright, trademark, and patent. I did not know that before this talk.
30:20
And also, thank you for a great ending note. If there are any questions, you can, as she said, you can grab her in the hallway and ask those questions because we don't have time for questions. Thank you very much. Another round of applause for Anvesha, please.