Ethical Issues and Intellectual Properties

            In this informative essay the ethical issues related to business and intellectual properties will be discussed. Business ethics is the ethical behavior or those actions which are taken to lighten upon the human values. The business cannot declare itself as highly ethical company or organization if they dealt with people of non ethical values like to ignore the forced or child labor, to give productions in the sweatshops, to ignore or break the most vital laws or taking work from the employers having health issues or having work done in unhealthy environment. All the chain of business should be ethical in their behavior from the contractor to the sale agents. Business ethics is also termed as corporate ethics; this observes the basic principles of the environment. It influentially determines the fundamental purpose of the business.

Ethical issues often arise from the intellectual property; intellectual property actually refers to the protection of the ideas or creativity of a person. It can be copyright or industrial trademark. Copyright refers to the protection of literary or artistic works while patents, trade secrets and trademark are the protection of the goods or other products in the business. It legally occurs to prevent the loss of profit from the original person, who has created a unique idea or thing in his set of mind. It is the protection of non-tangible property. 

Ethical issues arise in every company or in every business. It should be the owner’s responsibility to work according to the laws of the intellectual property. The ethical issues arise from how the group member contribution should be rewarded or measured. Many stakeholders arises ethical issues for decision-making. Business ethics demand positivity from a customer and it also increases new ethical investors.

A case can be studied such as a pharmaceutical company has invented a drug or any vaccine against a disease now the company wants to put a patent towards it so that no one could know how it is made and what are the ingredients used in it. The company makes the drug their intellectual property. This is an ethical issue as if the company would tell the secret of the making of that vaccine many other companies will also try to make that drug; and even if any one is successful in making that vaccine whole lot of people will be benefited from it. Many patients will get medicine in low rates as not every company medicines are affordable to common man. How could the rights of the pharmaceutical company be protected if the people are not benefitted from it? (Illinois Institute of Technology, 2012)

In some other cases also like if anyone has written a book or have done research on some thing, it is the right of the person that all the benefits of that book or research will go to him. All the popularity gained from the thing should only belong to the owner or the writer. This can only be done to protect their intangible property. This is done by putting a trademark or copyright over that thing. This ensures that only that person who has copyrighted it had the power to copy the information from it. Now in doing a business it is not only important to make the decisions legally but also ethically. Only the person who has copyrighted it has the authority to give away the information or to use that info. It is the responsibility of the company or any business to make their work and behavior as ethical as possible. (S. K. Mandal, 2010)

It is very important to protect one’s intellectual property. Only this protection can make one’s property (i.e. his ideas, concepts, designs and inventions) as his own for a lifetime.  Protection is a vital component for one’s success. Intellectual properties are the things, which are valuable to you, they are the achievements of people who had worked hard and these should be protected from any type of theft. There are a number of ways by which, IP can be protected; to protect an IP is very important. This can be by copyright, trademark, patent or trade secrets. Copyright is the protection of written or artistic for of work like, novels, journals, articles, poems or songs. Patent is the protection of tangible things this is done by the government. Trademark is used to protect the rights of the association with services or products. Trade secrets are to cover the formulas patterns or device. It is covered by the states. These protections are made to ensure that the idea, design or any concept is a person intellectual property and it should not be used without the authority of that person.(Homer, 2008) 

Public goods are those goods in which when one uses it, it does not mean the availability of that good is reduced to the other person. Content producers are the investors who work online through different websites. 

                                                   References

Illinois Institute of Technology (2012), retrieved from, http://guides.library.iit.edu/content.php?pid=85516&sid=636357

S. K. Mandal (2010), Ethics in Business & Corp Governance, Tata McGraw-Hill Education

Homer Alfred Neal, Tobin L. Smith, Jennifer B. McCormick (2008), Beyond Sputnik, University of Michigan Press