Intellectual property and privacy

 

Intellectual Property is a term used to describe private knowledge, methods, and experience that a person obtained during his lifetime. In trying to find a definition of this term, Wikipedia for instance, we get some understanding of the concept of “The intangible nature of intellectual property presents difficulties when compared with a traditional property like land or goods” (Wikipedia). Ask a lawyer, and you would get another definition regarding the criminal aspects of the term and of people who do not respect it.

For the sake of this article, let Intellectual Property be IP, and let IP be private knowledge. And so, if it is private than a person should keep it to himself and decide whom he would like to share it with. But the fact is that IP is not as private and secure as we would expect it to be because of our nature and behavior. There are cases when we use our IP only for ourselves, but in most of the cases, our IP is the infrastructure of our expertise or even our business, whereas we often share what we know with others either as our employees or co-workers and managers. Either way, this is a point from which our IP is not just ours anymore.

Having said that, we begin, sadly, to realize that what we thought to be our property is, in some cases, almost common knowledge. These cases, by the way, are typical for small entrepreneur businesses which are not protected by a patent or law. In my opinion, in most of the cases, people share some of their IP with others as a necessity and keep the core of the knowledge, the secrets, in their heads, or just well hidden.

I am not a lawyer or even close to practice law, so this all article is based on my experience and opinion. I started this article with an elusive definition of IP, then I tried to understand what is private in IP, and lastly, we came to realize that IP is partly ours and partly not. And from this point, we should focus the discussion on the private and secret part of our IP.

Just for the argument let us think of an FB group. This group is public, and anyone can join immediately or after the admins' approval. Let us assume that the group has a leading theme like fixing flat tires. All there is to say about flat tires and how to fix them. We can agree that if there are many educated members in the group, the content accumulated in the group regarding fixing a flat tire is, in a way, priceless because it is based on the wisdom of the crowd. Would you say that the content is someone’s IP? If we look at the content through the business glasses, wouldn’t we find core information that can be converted into profits, strategic edge and ideas for advertisements? I say that this is exactly the case.

let us ask ourselves some questions; Who can use the content for personal interest, who owns the content, can anyone using FB take the content and use it, what are, if any, the rights of the groups' admin, is there a strong enough regulator (e.g. FB) that can punish IP thieves? Many questions to ask and I am not sure that there is a clear-cut answer to each question.

Now let's drill down a little more to the dilemmas. If I were to be a group admin, I would give much time and care to the well-being of the group in terms of keeping the content contemporary, posting interesting and relevant posts, reacting to interesting posts posted by other members, monitoring the content and making sure that new members are approved according to my standards. I'd think that all these actions indicate that I own the group, I control the group, and this is my IP.

In fact, I do not think that my last argument would be enough in case of an IP theft trial. The truth is that if the group is public, the content is public and it doesn't belong to anyone, and at the same time, it belongs to everyone including FB itself.

What happens if the group is a closed group? the flat tire fixers can create a small closed community. In this case, the role of the admin is crucial for the existence of the group. Membership is in the control of the admin and so is the content. Only members can post content and only members can see the content. A small domain controlled by an admin. And now we shall ask the questions again; what are the rights of the admin in terms of IP, can a member from the group use the content for personal use without the permission of the admin, does the admin have any protective law against IP theft?

In my opinion, this scenario is different from the first one mainly because it allows the admin to be the gator of the group and therefore gives him the ownership of the group.

What is the meaning of IP theft in an FB group? I suppose that here comes a new term in this article, and it is Sourcing. Sourcing the web is a new profession in the BI units and its affiliates with Data Mining and Webint. What can a sourcing professional do to be called an IP thief? By scrapping all data from the group (must be a member) the wisdom of the crowd can become a raw pure data of text and connections. If the group is open to members and the scrapper is a member, in my opinion, this would not be considered as a crime.

This is, itself is not a bad thing but let me give a little advice to the admin that wants to keep the groups' IP private. First, let all members know, when approved, that personal use of the content and connections are not free unless permission granted by the admin. Second, if an admin understands the value of the groups' IP it must be used. Do not wait too long with it because very smart and talented people work, literally work, in finding focused groups and creating a career out of others' IP.

Finally, if you are a group admin and your group is big in members and content, please do not think that you can analyze the groups' data by yourself if you did not learn how to do that. An accurate full analysis might take a very long time. A “do it yourself” analysis might bring out some wrong outputs for you to consider when formatting your IP concepts. In these cases, you should use the assistance of a Webint professional, Data Miner or CI specialist. They know what to do and how to do it. You get a full report of your IP and a very long list of business suggestions for how to promote your IP.

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