In recent years, intellectual property, which includes the right to use a copyrighted work for any purpose other than for one’s own personal, private use, has become a hot topic in the U.S. Copyright law protects the right of anyone to use any copyrighted work to reproduce and distribute, and it generally protects people from being sued for using copyrighted works to reproduce other works.
But some companies, including Apple and Google, have sought to use patents as a way to gain a competitive edge over rivals.
The U.K. Copyright Office recently rejected a proposed U.B.C. (the U.N.’s copyright agency) patent for a “multi-layered digital content management system” that would let users manage their own websites using an iPhone.
In Canada, Google’s patent application for a system to manage video clips on YouTube is now in the hands of the Canadian Patent and Trademark Office. In the U
