Ensuring Digital Signature Lawfulness for Assignment of Intellectual Property in United States

How to eSign a document: digital signature lawfulness for Assignment of intellectual property in United States

hello friends I'm dr. Raman methyl I work at the Faculty of Law University of Delhi in this module we shall be talking about assignments and licenses of intellectual property you that is how intellectual property rights could be transferred by the owner to other persons how the owner of intellectual property can invite others in participating in exploitation of the works in which he has intellectual property rights now where do you find licenses and assignments what are the instances of it we find them all around do we find it here in a bottle of a coke yes the bottle of the coke that we consume comes to us only through the process of licensing of intellectual property there are various licenses or assignments involved in the whole process of manufacturing bottling and consumption of these soft drink bottles then the t-shirt that we were carrying the logo of a famous of a famous character that comes to us through licensing activity only then software that we consume is also subjected to licensing in fact we consume software's as licenses rather than as buyers in case of films how the film comes to us whether through broadcasting or through cinema hall it also involves the case of intellectual property licensing the books that we read is also involving the case of licensing or assignment of copyright so we say licensing is ubiquitous we find it everywhere first in order to understand the aspect of licensing and assignment let us look at it from the angle of a lawyer what are the tasks of an intellectual property lawyer the first task is obtaining rights the second task is after obtaining rights protecting those rights and the third task is exploiting rights so obtaining rights and protecting rights cannot be ends in themselves because what for are you obtaining rights but for have you protected those rights you have done so only with the aim of exploiting those rights so the fundamental task of an IP lawyer is to aid how to maximize or to monetize through the utilization or exploitation of intellectual the rights of his clients the exploitation could be of two types self exploration and exploitation through others if the owner of intellectual property utilizes his own intellectual property himself then is the case of self exploitation of intellectual property if the owner invites others or gives away his intellectual property to others for exploitation then it is the case of exploitation through others which is normally done through licenses and sometimes through assignments as well now both licensing and assignments are transfers of intellectual property so let us go a step earlier and understand what is meant by transfer of intellectual property is intellectual property transferable yes intellectual property rights most of the we can say the intellectual property rights are transferable in nature these transfers could take place either by the mechanism of a contract or a mechanism which is apart from the contract which is for example by operation of law for example the owner of intellectual property dies so his legal hers will get the intellectual property which was owned by the dead person so but the most important one for our purposes is the contractual transfer of intellectual property contractual transfer of intellectual property could be achieved in the form of assignments lease license mortgage or sale all these are legally different and significant aspects and concepts of law and they have they convey very different rights and very different meanings and very different consequences now most important types of contractual transfer of IP or intellectual property is through assignments and licenses the licensing activity gets impetus from three fundamental aspects of law first is the rights which are contained within intellectual property they are of exclusive nature this exclusivity of rights aids the activity of Licensing what is understood by exclusivity of rights now the rights Zippity means that the owner alone has the right to exploit his intellectual property so we can look at this aspect of exclusivity from one angle that means the restrictive angle that gives the owner a right to exclude others but the other aspect of this exclusivity is that the owner has the Liberty has the freedom to invite all others to partake in the exploitation of his intellectual property thereby he'll be allowing others permitting others to participate in the exploitation process and also earning for himself some remuneration so this aspect of exclusivity really aids the licensing activity the second aspect is the intense ability of intellectual property intellectual property we understand is intangible in nature now the enjoyment or the utilization of this intellectual property being in intangible property does not detract the use of one person does not detract from its use by the other person potentially the in any intellectual property could it could be utilized by any number of persons it is in contradistinction with a physical property for example somewhere a owns a house in case he wants to party allow B to utilize his house then the house has to be divided between a and B so that is not the case with intellectual property both a and B can have the same and any number of persons can have the same property for its exploitation so this intangibility or intangible nature of the intellectual property also aids the licensing activity because the owner can invite n number of persons for its exploitation the third aspect is that gives impetus to the licensing activity is the freedom of contract the law permits the owner to freely contract out his property this freedom of contract also aids index in in the exit licensing activity intellectual property as we have seen has three limbs first is creation of property then second is protection of intellectual property and third is its exploitation so one question is fundamental to this circle of intellectual property should a property be created first and then protected and then exploited in other words is it always the case that intellectual property is created first and then exploited well that is not always the case that may be the case in some times but the modern practices of the market they if we peep into those modern practices we find that exploitation of the property takes first and then the property is created only upon its exploitation for example a person there is a person who wants to make a film he is a film producer so first thing he needs he requires is a script so he Commission's mr. a to write a script for his film so for that he already pays mr. a upfront so as a particular sum of money so can we say that the property intellectual property copyright was created first and then expert in this case no because it was the property was subject to sale first and then it was created because only upon an assurance of money and actual payment of some advance money that the author was ready to create it for the producer so in this sense we can also say see the modern practices in which inventions are made employs a first people are employed in business undertakings they are given certain tasks and before they create something they already have assigned by virtue of their employment contract to the employer the rights in all their creativity so exploitation many a time comes before creativity and protection in case of intellectual property