Intellectual Property Protection In Software Industry

The computer was born not out of a need to solve a serious number-crunching crisis.¹ By 1880, the U.S. population had risen so much that it took more than seven years to tabulate the U.S. Census results.² So, to get the job done faster the Government sought a faster way which gave rise to punch-card based computers. These computers were huge and took up almost an entire room.

If we go through the history of computing projects we can make out that software was created long before the first electronic computers came to be.³ The credit for the invention of the software in the mid-1800s goes to Charles Babbage. ⁴

Intellectual property rights are at the root of the software industry. Innovations made in the software products can quintessentially be protected by patents, copyrights and trademarks. Patents and copyrights provide protection to the software itself. On the other hand, Trademarks protects the names or symbols used to create a distinguishable identity in