As all we know, copyright is the set of primary rights given to the author or creator of an original product. Copyright gives some opportunities to the owner of that work such as right to copy, distribute and adapt the work. (Wikipedia, 2010). In the same way, a patent is a legal document that grants its owner, the right to prevent others from any kind of usage, copying and or commercially application without authorization. (European Patent Office, 2007). According to FSEK[1], any kind of knowledge, literature, art of music or cinema etc. is considered as a monument, work of his or her creator/ author (Hukukinet, 2009). One of the most important issues is known/ considered as copyright, but nobody gives its importance as it necessitates. In all most all areas patenting any kind of work becomes more important as time passes. To give some examples, huge precautions are taken to obtain meaningful patents in order to gain power of rivalry in media sector, drug industry, agricultural industry, music industry, weapon industry, automotive industry etc. In this article the future of music industry in terms of patent application.
It might be a good idea to look at the recent history of the music industry. Sony and Philips were the most competitors in the music industry in 1990’s. When Philips built the CD-ROM, Sony built the Minidisc (MD). Nevertheless the MD never replaced, compact disc’s market share, and died in the late 90’s. By 1998 music piracy started on the Internet by developing MP3 format. But, record companies started using watermarks to help prevent piracy. Many companies tried to use legal alternatives to pirated music, but failed (Hunt, A. K. et al., 2008). According to (Hunt, A. K. et al., 2008) studies, music sales graphic was dramatically decreased when looking from wide perspective.
After the digital publication technology pervades, the cost of copying and distribution of any kind of work becomes cheaper because of the increase in the availability of access to the free resources. The most common example of mentioned technology as we know is Internet. Internet makes it possible for the users to copy, share, or download any file without considering copyrights or related constitutions. Some people assert that nobody can stop the file sharing because the widespread usage (Mike, 2005).
However, as (Tonta, 2003) discusses in his article, piracy is not just seeing a document without payment. But it is, hiding any document and sharing with many others without any payment. This is of course is a nightmare for publishers.
Therefore, publishers have to apply for patent to protect their rights. However applying for a patent is not as easy as it seems. It becomes very difficult as time passes to approve a patent in any sector.
According to studies of (Dericioğlu, K. 2010), patent system is an important strategic topic for many countries such as United Kingdom, France, Canada etc. Nevertheless, after Turkey contributed into PCT (1996)[2] and European patent agreement (2000), international and local patent applications are only investigated by European patent office. According to (Ankara patent, 2007), patent approval process is difficult and takes long time. This shows us it is very difficult for many countries including Turkey to approve valuable patents due to patent rivalries of big companies. What is important here is that, big companies generally from big countries determine which patent to be approved. Sometimes they buy others’ patent or create a new patent that is much closer to another approved patent. According to Global Competitive Index, Sweeden, Denmark, and USA are the first competitors and Turkey is the 59th in this index (Eczacıbaşı, 2007). To give an example of patent rivalry, (AP) a federal jury awarded a software company, Eolas Technologies Inc. and the University of California more than $520 million because Microsoft Corp.’s popular Internet Explorer browser infringed on a patent (CBS News, 2003).
Another important issue is that, although it is difficult to approve a patent, there are many unlicensed, useless patents, a research by Bein, D. and his colleagues, shows that over 95% of the patents are unlicensed, and 97% generate no copyright. According to this research the reason is absolutely giant corporations. These foundations have hindered individual inventors to license and/or promote their patents. In other words, many patents became useless because of rapid increase in producing new work and increase in file sharing.
Although it is difficult to predict the future of the music industry one can draw some scenarios. Who could have predicted the MP3 player twenty five years ago? Today, the Internet makes it possible for artists to sell their work directly to the consumer. Or it provides file sharing and downloading free. No one obeys copyrights and no constitution is implemented as it necessitates. According to According to FSEK, (2001) any intrusion of copyright in terms of renting or loaning to the public without written permission of producer, will be punished by 4 to 6 years prison, and 50-150.000 TL (Tonta, 2003). However, I did not see or hear anyone punished because of this type of crime. No one applies any constitution. So nobody is afraid of intrusion of copyrights, although they know consequences of illegal downloading a file. Of course, this makes record companies useless. However, it is obvious that the big record companies will have to make big adjustments. For instance, there are some efforts to stop music piracy with using digital filgrans etc. (Tonta, 2003). Another scenario about stopping music piracy is using decoy files that deliver noise and ‘gotcha’ (Chardant, 2004). Nevertheless, according to a research paper prepared by computer scientists working for Microsoft, the steady spread of file swapping systems and improvements in their organization will eventually make any efforts to stop music piracy useless (BBC, 2002). Approximately 3.000 days has passed after this research and it is obvious that file sharing or downloading from the internet increased and spreaded all over the world. According to (Internet World Stats, 2009) research, Internet usage has increased from 360,985,492 users (2000), to 6,767,805,208 users (2009) in the world. Even in Africa it has increased from 4,514,400 users (2000), to 991,002,342 users (2009).
Therefore, in the light of the information above, I am of the opinion that patent rivalries will become very intensive perhaps one or two more years. However, this will not continue forever and patent passion will end up in many sectors one of which is music industry which is related with copyright law about music file sharing or downloading using Internet. The main reason is absolutely that there is very hyperbolic increase of internet usage and file sharing and or downloading. Computer -which is the main and wide spread supplier of internet- is the best machine in the history of mankind, every day 100 billion clicking is made up, and its web pages provides 55 trillion information connections (Çakmak, 2009). There are three alternatives that could be in the future, one copyright laws will be applied harshly by punishing billions of people, second internet will be end up, third laws will be adjusted into feasible ones that will not include copyright fines, on coming 5000 days. The first two of course is not meaningful and applicable.
References:
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BBC, (2002). Efforts to stop music piracy ‘pointless’, retrieved on 13 April, 2010, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2502399.stm
Bein, D. et al. (?), Why is hard to patent an invention, University of Texas in Dallas, USA, http://www.egr.unlv.edu/~bein/pubs/patent.pdf
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Tonta, Yaşar (2003). Elektronik Bilgi ve Telif Haklari, H.Ü. Bilgi ve Belge Yönetimi Bölümü, available at: yunus.hacettepe.edu.tr/~tonta/courses/fall2003/kut655/telif-2003.doc
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