Aspects of Intellectual Property Law for HEP Software Developers

Abstract

In this day and age, when any significant software development project first gets going, every developer needs to consider the Intellectual Property impacts, whether it is to avoid doing anything that will infringe others rights, or simply that one wishes to either protect their own rights or preserve their ability to control the exploitation of their efforts. When one thinks of software development and Intellectual Property issues, the laws with respect to Copyrights and possibly Patents come to mind first. These areas of the law are clearly very important but the worlds of Trademarks and Trade Secrets, including employment agreements are many times just as crucial to consider. The advent of the Internet has also had an impact on the law in many ways that are not yet entirely settled. Finally, the European Union has embarked on a major experiment in Intellectual Property law with the creation of a wholly new paradigm in protecting databases. This chapter will present synopsis of the current state of these areas of the law with a slant towards their application to software development projects and the people involved in them both as developers and users.