How to keep open-source based innovation approaches sustainable: a view from the intellectual property perspective

Abstract

Open Source-based innovation has an exponentially increasing significance for companies seeking to improve their product portfolio without maintaining a costly research department. The abundant product-related data provided by users in virtual communities in form of comments, feedbacks, and recommendations is already today an essential source of innovation for the goods- producing, but also the tertiary sector. While these data are basically freely accessible on the web, the questions remains in how far this approach is sustainable, i.e. secure and safe also in legal terms. In fact, there are various intellectual property issues protecting the user’s contribution (see e.g. copyrights, patents, utility- and design models) which are often not taken into account by companies making use of the respective data, causing an eventual infringement of protected rights and therefore the sustainability of the company’s innovation policy.