Intellectual Property and Issues of Copyrighting in the Digital Age

On many websites, this policy link is located on the bottom of the webpage. For example, on my t-shirt website, http://tdzign.spreadshirt.com, the intellectual property rights policy link is featured.

In the Spreadshirt intellectual property policy, this is some of the company's exact statement:

"In the Terms of Service, Spreadshirt prohibits shop owners from setting up or putting into circulation any merchandising articles that infringe the original, brands or copyrights of a third party."


According to law terms, intellectual property, or IP is defined as legal entitlements that are attached to certain names, whether written and/or recorded media, and inventions. This also refers to many exclusive rights in relation to a specified form or manner in that ideas or information are expressed, unrelated to the ideas or concepts. This term also allows authors, inventors, and other IP holders to have specific legal rights and not the intellectual work.

There are many conflicts with intellectual property. There are many people who believe that IP gives a temporary monopoly that protects the use and/or exploitation, which is supported by the mechanisms of legal entitlement. The United States Supreme Court often refers to patents as a "limited monopoly". In reality, IP protection cannot be thought of giving an economic monopoly because a monopoly can only be in the market's presence and the people should be able to bring the market to a point where higher than competitive prices are able to be kept. This is hardly achievable by an owner of intellectual property.

Intellectual property is easily produced that it does not deprive the owners. Many intellectual property forms meet the criteria for the non-rival test for public goods: the use of the good by an individual does not limit the use of the good by others.

In contrast, the unauthorized use of intellectual property is a violation of the basic bargain, making the original deprivation of possession wrongful and the public is required to act to create the good on the bargain by granting the rights that are enforced.