Pont’s investment. It also made the company much less willing to invest in R&D (research and development) suggest solutions to International companies must copyright infringement remain vigilant against violation of their intellectual property rights. a lot of coders and IT creators cut their teeth on at least some pirated software. should find another way to protect people’s innovations

Expanding Your Creativity

“Don’t copy at all, or give the source, otherwise it’s plagiarism, of course.”

Sometimes questions of plagiarism can be quite complex. For example, it is clear that an original piece of writing is plagiarized if it is copied and used in a public or academic context without acknowledging the source. But how do we know what an original idea is? Where do ideas come from? Where did the “original” writer get the ideas? What if someone took the ideas but expressed them in a different way? Would it be plagiarism if someone took the idea or plot of a story and then wrote a different version using the same plot? Many writers have done this, often subconsciously if they forgot about reading the original story. Writers like Shakespeare routinely took story ideas from other writers, but then at that time the laws about plagiarism were nonexistent and certainly people had a different awareness of the authorship or ownership of writing.

Work with a partner. You have several tasks which are linked:

First, discuss how as a writer you might feel if you discovered that someone had plagiarized your work: maybe you would have some of the feelings in the box.

angry annoyed cheated

Next, think of the likely excuses someone might make if they did plagiarize. Would you find the excuses in the box below convincing? coincidence accident two pieces of writing are similar by chance the second writer meant to acknowledge the first but somehow forgot to do so circumstance the second writer was in a hurry and did not have time to check the source ignorance

Prepare a role-play: one of you is A, the other is B.

A: You are a writer — you believe your work has been plagiarized and you want to complain to a judge in court about this.

the second writer did not know about plagiarism frustrated happy upset flattered bitter deprived calm patient unrecognized B: You are in court accused of plagiarizing — you must decide if you really plagiarized or not; if not, you must think of your defence, so prepare some excuses.

Now join another pair. The first pair performs their role-play in front of the second: the second pair are the judges in the court — at the end of the role-play you have to decide if this is a case of plagiarism or not. If it is plagiarism, what is the appropriate punishment?

Further Information Further Information

1. Patents: A beginner's guide to intellectual property http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-23673385 2. Government accused over intellectual property laws

http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/house_of_commons/newsid_9693000/9693483.stm

3. Can China become an intellectual property powerhouse?

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/02/14/china.intellectual.property/index.html