Intellectual property refers to intangible assets. This mostly refers to software, proprietary code, and other digital assets owned by the organization, but can also refer to unpublished books, music, art, inventions, patents, or other information that should be protected.
When talking about software, the following intellectual property terms apply – try to think about what your organization does for its non-proprietary software usage (e.g. MS Word, etc.):
- Site license – refers to bulk purchases, for all staff within the organization, done for a specific length, and there is typically a cap on the number of licenses
- Per-seat license – another bulk purchase (number of licenses is chosen rather than having a cap), or pay-per-copy (usually discounted)
- Shareware – use is allowed with constraints, free for non-commercial use, commercial use would require payment
- Public Chapter (previously “public domain”) – use is allowed without constraints, for any purpose, including modification and customization. Support and extra features must be purchased.
Digital Rights Management (DRM)
DRM is a concept that candidates need to be familiar with. Here are the elements of a DRM solution:
Persistency – Access controls follow the material wherever it goes. The best example of this is a DVD that carries its encryption wherever it goes.
Dynamic policy control – This refers to centralized permissions management typically for an organization that needs to allow the owner of the intellectual property to manage and update rights to access the data.
Automatic expiration – License can expire automatically on a specific date, whether for a specific installation or at a point in time where the software becomes public domain.
Continuous audit trail – Captures all activity on the material, views, access, modification, copying, etc.Interoperability – This concept refers to the solution fitting into any environment, windows, linux, email, file structure, or access control methods.