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'Intellectual Property
on Planet-e'_Matt Hardisty.
Printable version
Industry analysts as the new mantra for the digital economy
are chanting 'Content, commerce and community', with content being 'the' driver
for the all new empowered consumer in the 'click-deep' economy. However, in
an age in which content is being rapidly stripped away from its medium, copied
and distributed for free over the Internet, intellectual property is becoming
'the' hot issue within the media industry. For the creative enterprise in
which intellectual property is their core asset (film, television, music,
magazines, newspapers and books), this poses a significant threat, causing
business models to be radically contorted in order to sustain their existence.
After all, how do you catch and prosecute a publisher on planet-e?
The music industry at present is the 'canary down the digital coal-mine'.
We have seen legal disputes between the Recording Industry Association of
America (RIAA) against Diamond Rio (over its MP3 player), Napster (for its
service which allows the swapping of MP3 files without ever visiting a web
site) and more recently, MP3.com (for its 'Beam-It' service). Such disputes
are a sign of things to come for other enterprises that rely upon intellectual
property. Music has been at the forefront of these disputes for two key reasons:
the file size of a song, meaning easy distribution and the cultural appeal
of music to the demographic of the Internet user. However, with technological
progression similar legal disputes will soon be impacting upon the film industry
amongst others, in which pirated films will be able to be downloaded in a
matter of minutes rather than hours.
Encryption and/or watermarking of the information, facilitating tracking of
illegal copies is thought to be a way forward, however this does not overcome
the issue that content is now 'free'. As a result, creative enterprises are
now slowly realising that 'intellectual assets and property will depreciate
while intellectual processes and services will appreciate' (Wired, July 1995).
Within the music industry, we have seen the emergence of three models for
the future. The first is by offering a quality service, for which the consumer
pays for the intellectual property (e.g. icrunch.com). The second, is to use
the Internet to promote off-line intellectual property, by giving away 'tasters'
such as individual songs (David Bowie, Madonna and Public Enemy) or chapters
from books (Seth Godin's 'Permission Marketing'). The third model raises it
arms and allows consumers to market the product themselves. An example of
this growing trend has been with the rock group 'The Grateful Dead', which
have allowed recordings to be freely distributed on-line, resulting in increased
sales of ancillary services such as concert attendance and merchandise.
However, the ability to patent communication
techniques on the Internet has emerged as a more legitimate way to protect
intellectual property and possibly more threatening to a truly competitive
landscape. For example, amazon.com has recently been granted ownership of
the one-click technique, where one Web site links to a purchase transition
on another site - the so-called 'Internet based customer referral system'.
Many players use this technique, therefore the danger is that amazon and others
'on the ball', will put a stranglehold on e-commerce earning additional revenue
by suing their competitors. Amazon.com has already sued competitor barnesandnoble.com
over another of its Web patents.
The word of advice from these lessons is to examine how you 'value' intellectual
property within the business and your patents. In the digital economy, patent
portfolios can be both an offensive and defensive tactic and intellectual
property and its protection needs to be closely examined.
matt@folkdevil.com