Intellectual Property Rights In Cyberspace

Emergence of digital and information technologies towards the concluding decades of 20th century as the defining paradigms of new communication has raised a whole new set of challenges to legal regime. When intellectual property laws were first drafted, computer technology did not exist. At that time, it was not foreseen that it would be necessary to protect information stored by digital means, nor was it foreseen that information would become such a sought after commodity. The Internet, software, business-methods for e-commerce applications and electronic databases are relatively new territories where innovators have created an environment in which information exists in plentiful quantities and available to many people. However, due to the lack of concrete laws, the Internet has become a breeding ground for several unlawful activities most of them related to intellectual property rights, namely copyrights and trademarks. In this paper an attempt has been made to identify and explore the impact of the internet technology on Intellectual Property Rights and the implications for the legal system including the extent of protection offered to IPR over the cyberspace. The author has employed the US legislations, case law precedents along with Indian legislations on IPR for the analysis.