Intellectual Property and Software Development

Chapter 6

1) You have been asked by the manager of software development to lead a small group of software developers in an attempt to reengineer the latest release of the software by your leading competitor. The goal of the group is to identify features that could be implemented into the next few releases of your firm software. You are told that the group would relocate from the united states to the island of Antigua, in the carreibbean sea, to “reduce the risk the group being destructed by the daily pressures associated with developing fixes and enhancements with the current software release.” What sort of legal and/or ethical questions might be raised by the reengineering effort? Would you consider

taking this position?

Answer: Reengineering is a process of software development which is done to improve the maintainability of a software system  and in technical definition it is the examination and alteration of a system to reconstitute it in a new form. Does the reengineering really worth for the time and effort and does relocating is necessary.  For me I consider taking that position because it is an opportunity to show our skills and gain knowledge from it.

2) You have procrastinated to long and now your final paper for your English course is due in just 5 days- right in the middle of the final exam week! The paper counts for half your grade for the term and would probably take you atleast 20hrs. Of research and write. Your roommate, an English major with a 3.8GPA, has suggested 2 options. (1) he will write an original paper for you for $100, or (2) he will show you 2 of 3 “paper mill” websites, from which you can download a paper for less than $35. You wanted to do the right thing, but writing the paper will take away from the time you have available to study for your final exam in 3 other courses. What would you do?

Answer: In the two option that’s being suggested by my roommate I will not choose any of them. For me, I would rather do the right thing than downloading the research paper that he/she wanted me to do and I will not also let him/her to right my research paper. I manage my time to accomplish my research paper.

  

3) You are beginning to feel very uncomfortable in your new position as a computer hardware salesperson for a firm that is the major competitor of your previous employer. Today for the second time, someone has mentioned to you how valuable it would be to know what the marketing a new product development plans whereof your ex-employer. You stated that you are an able to discuss such information under the non disclosure contract signed with your former employer, but you know your response did not satisfy your new co-workers. You fear that the pressure to reveal information about the plans of your former company is only going to increase over the next few weeks. What do you do?

Answer: As an ex-employee in the other company it is the right thing to do for not giving the information. I will also explain to my co-worker that the information I have is still confidential and covered by the Trade Secret Law which state that Trade secret law is a branch of intellectual property law that is concerned with the protection of proprietary information against unauthorized commercial use by others. In the United States, misappropriation of trade secrety is is forbidden by the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA) and the Economic Espionage Act of 1996

4) You have been asked to lead your company’s new competitive intelligence organization. What would you do to ensure that members of the new organization obey applicable law and the companys’ own ethical policies.

Answer: As a leader to ensure that the member of my new company organization obey the applicable law and company ethical policies I will conduct training for them and I will discuss also the punishment in every disobedient and unethical works in my company.

5) You are the vice president for software development at a small, private firm. Sales of your firms products have been strong, but you recently detected a patent infringement by one of your larger competitors. Your in-house legal stuff has identified 3 options: (1) ignore the infringement out of fear that your larger competitor will file numerous countersuits; (2) threaten to file suite, but try to negotiate an out-of-court settlement of an amount of money.

Answer:  In the option given, I will choose second option “threaten to file suite, but try to negotiate an out court settlement of an amount of money. And as a vice president I will not consider such thing that is being done without the consent of  the inventor. And Patent infringement is the act of making, using, selling, or offering to sell a patented invention, or importing into the United States a product covered by a claim of a patent without the permission of the patent owner.

Chapter 7

1. Apple Guidelines for App Approval

Apple’s App Store has been a huge success ever since it was launched in 2008. As of the end of 2010, the app store offered more than 250, 000 applications available for sale to owners of apple, iPhone, iPad and iPod devices, with more than 6.5 Billion downloads since it opened.

Before software applications can be solved throught the App Store, they must go through a review process. Apple has been accused by some of using clandestine and capricious rules to reject some programs and thus blocking them from reaching the very large and growing market of iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users. One application developer complained: “ if you submit an app, you have no idea whats going to happen. You have no idea it’s going to be approved or if it’s going to be disapproved.” The developers of an app called “South Park” complained that their app was rejected because the content was deemed “potentially offensive ,” even though episodes of the award-winning animated sitcom are available at the Apple iTunes  Store. In September 2010, after more than two years of complains, apple finally provided applications developers the guidelines it uses to review software.

Most guidelines seem to be aimed at ensuring that Apple users can only access high quality and non-controversials Apps from its Apps Store. Some of the Apple guidelines are clear and their rationale is easy to understand, such as “ apps that rapidly drain the device’s battery or generate excessive eat will be rejected.” However, other guidelines are unclear and highly subjective, such as “ we will reject apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line.” What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said ,“ I’ll know it when i see it. ‘ and we think that you will also know it when you cross it. (“ I know it when I see it” was the phrase used by U.S Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to describe his ability to recognize rather than to provide a precise definition of hard core pornography and his opinion in the cae Jacobellis v. Ohio in 1964.)

The electronic frontier foundation believes that while the guidelines are helpful, in some cases apple is defining the content of third-party software and placing limits on what is available to customers of Apple’s App Store.

By way of comparison, Google places few restrictions and developers of software for its competing Android Marketplace. However, there have been many low-quality applications offered to Android Marketplace customers, including some that include unwanted malware. Indeed by early 2011, google had pulled 21 Android applications from its Android Marketplace because, once downloaded, the applications not only stole users’ information and device data but also created a back door for even more harmful attacks. Apple’s decision to finally share applications guidelines may have been an attempt to combat the rapidly increasing popularity the android. It may also have been a response to a U.S Federal Trade Commissions investigations of a complaint for Adobe concerning Apples banning of the flash software from devices that run using Apple’s iOS operating system (Adobe Flash player is a browser-based applications that runs in many computer hardware/ operating system combination and support the viewing of called “rich, expressive applications,” content, the videos across screens and browsers .)

Discussion Questions:

1. Should Apple conduct extensive screening of Apps before they are allowed to be sold on the App Store? Why or why not?

Answer: Yes, the apple should conduct extensive screening for their apps before they sold it in the app’s store to avoid harmful apps that can give chances to the malware and other viruses to attack the apple products.

2. Do research to determine the current status of the FCC investigatin of Apple for banning use of the Adobe Flash software and devices that use the iOS operating system.

Answer: Adobe's Flash Surrender Proves Steve Jobs And Apple Were Right All Along With HTML5

This article is the fifth in a series, “The Future of Apple,” designed to give investors appropriate insights on the future of the iconic company.  After the passing of Steve Jobs, investors face uncertainty in shares of Apple (AAPL).  Will the stock next hit $100 or $1,000?

The fifth article in this series was scheduled to provide more evidence of why patents will help Apple make billions from Google Android. In view of the breaking news on Flash, this article has taken precedence.  The previously scheduled article will now be the sixth article in this series.

Flash is a multimedia platform produced by Adobe (ADBE).  Flash has been the standard for adding video, interactivity, and animation to websites.  It has been widely accepted that Flash enriches the web experience for the user.

The popularity of Flash is obvious from the following statistics produced by Adobe:

98% of enterprises rely on Flash Player.

85% of the most used sites use Flash.

75% of web video is viewed using Flash Player.

70% of web games are made in Flash.

In 2010, Steve Jobs had the courage to question the applicability of the Flash technology going forward.  Jobs made waves and enemies when he banned Flash from use on all iOS devices.  iOS is the operating system from Apple.  Jobs was almost unanimously criticized by the industry.

Jobs took a big risk banning Flash, which also precluded users of Apple devices from seeing video and animation on most sites.

Steve Jobs championed an alternate technology called HTML5.  Revisiting an open memo that Jobs wrote is instructive.  Here is the memo.

Thoughts on Flash

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member. Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

3. What do you think of Apple’s guidelines that say it will reject an App for any content or behavior that they believe is over the line? Could such statement be construed as a violation of the developer’s freedom of speech? Why or why not?

Answer: For me that statement doesn’t   violate the developer freedom of speech because the statement can have different meaning. Maybe the meaning of the over the line are those words that is not good or bad.