‘’Intellectual
property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of
the human intellect, and primarily encompasses copyrights, patents, and
trademarks.[1] It also includes other types of rights, such as trade secrets,
publicity rights, moral rights, and rights against unfair competition.’’
Wikipedia.
From the
above definition, IP Rights could be regarding as a safeguard to protect the
creator’s works from those who might want to take undue advantage like
unpermitted copying or using them as their own work for financial or other
gain.
One of the
benefits of IP Rights is that it encourages innovation and creativity as the
creators are confident that their works are protected by law. This in turn
impacts positively to the technological progress of the nation.
However,
some industries like the Creative industry ‘’…. focus substantially on creating
and exploiting intellectual property products, such as music, books, film and
games….’’ (What Are Creative Industries. https://www.innovationpolicyplatform.org/content/ip-and-creative-industries) and this means that the Creative
industry to a large extent involves working on what others have created either improving
them or simply using them as part of a new creative work. So, a single creative
piece could involve several intellectual properties and the challenge is how to
ensure one is able to get the creator of all the properties which might be
easier said than done.
In fact, I
had an experience of this challenge after I designed a game and was thinking of
making it available to the public. I contacted all the creators of the objects
I used as sprites but majority of them never got back except one who even
informed me that she has given the right to that particular object to another
person/company. This means, I’ll have to create every single resource that is
required for the game; the storyline, the object, the music, the background
etc. and which will substantially increase the time to finish the piece apart
from the fact that I might not be skilled in some of these areas.
In
conclusion however, I believe that IP Rights is very important in the Creative
industry for creativity and innovation in our technology progress but there
might be a need for the industry to consider the sort of arrangement in the
media/broadcasting sector whereby any piece of music could be aired by any
broadcasting studio/station which is registered with a body and has paid a
royalty standard fee for such usage. This will achieve both ends of
appreciating the creators as well as reducing the burden of searching for
creator/s of each product or resource a professional needs to produce his/her
own creative work.
Samuel Oludare Yerokun
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