I remembered one professor ever told me that a successful thesis blends hundreds of papers and your own ideas together. Of course, the prerequisite is proper cited works. During a team project, the plagiarism could happen on our teammates. One way to find out if our teammates plagiarize other people’s work or not is to use plagiarism inspection software such as SafeAssign. The program would automatically compare our works with the Internet, academic articles and global reference database. Through the estimated matching percentage and sources, it is not difficult to tell which part of our works is plagiarism. However, it is much better if we could prevent the plagiarism before we turn in our project.

The pre-education of plagiarism would help team members to respect the importance of the copyright and the literary property. The team leader must caution members to aware the strict rules because the plagiarism usually happens when people overlook such a serious offence. Also, like what we learned from the class, it is safe to quote and cite all the possible outside works so as to prevent the unintentional plagiarism. All the works from team members should be asked to give detailed reference. Besides, members have to check each other’s work before turning in the project. The unintentional plagiarism sometimes could be easily found by bystanders. When someone in the group plagiarizes other people’s works, a piece of advice would be the best choice if the plagiarism is unintentional. I believe that most people would take the advice if they unintentionally plagiarize material. For someone who tries to plagiarize material intentionally, it is better to let the group leader knows and admonish him or her the serious consequence for the plagiarism.

In order to process righteous and ethical research, it is important to have the approval from Institutional Review Board (IRB). There are several steps for IRB review:

1. Evaluating the research and see if it would vulnerate participants or not before sending documents to IRB.
- The plan of the survey must meet the criteria and the requirement of IRB
approval.
- The research must show maximum benefit and minimal risk to participants.
2. If no, we must apply for exemption from the review by IRB.
3. If yes, we must provide the proposal of research also attached with informed consent.
4. We must provide IRB the ongoing (everlasting) plan for future research after the initial IRB approval.

Here are the reasons why we need the approval from IRB. Participants have decision-making power and researchers have responsibility to keep participants’ personal information private. Participants’ personal information has to be properly used in research. The analysis from IRB would reduce the risk which could happen to participants. Our company would get more benefit if there is lower risk in our research. When the IRB approval of survey passes, not only do participants’ safety and human rights get protected, but the research is also guaranteed.

Based on the principle of informed consent, participants must make their own decision without any inappropriate influence, temptation, or intimidation. Besides, IRB especially emphasizes the justice during the participant selection. Informed consent has always been placed high importance on by IRB. Therefore, offering extra credit to survey participants probably will not be an acceptable tactic for the IRB approval. Also, we should not ask all participants to complete the survey as the requirement of course credit. Like what I just said, the decision-making power is upon to participants. They have full right to choose do the survey or not. If there is any vulnerable participant, we must exclude him or her from the research.

So, I would like to represent several other strategies to help conduct the survey and make participants to cooperate in the research:

1. The questions in survey must be organized and simplified. It helps participants to read, and give answer rightly. Besides, the questions must be related to research object only and avoid touching participants’ privacy. The purpose of the survey design is to make participants as much comfortable as possible.
2. If informed consent is needed, it must detail the research purpose, research method, benefits and risks. It is because informed consent provides the foundation stone of the relationship between participants and researchers. Participants have right to be completely aware of the whole research plan, and agree or disagree to participate the research plan autonomously and rationally. It would help us to pass IRB review.
3. Giving participants discounts or coupons of tuition for their following studying. It is different between tuition discount and extra credit. Giving extra credit is unjust to other students who do not want to do the survey, and makes biased when evaluating students’ grades.

The basic principles for an appropriate research are ethical and scientific. Also, science should be established based on the fundament of ethics. One of the most important issues in the Nuremberg code is: the voluntary consent from participants is absolutely necessary. I represent this proposal in terms of this theory. An impartial research would benefit both participants and our company.

The best way for the protection of any new software product is the law. First, software manufacturers should apply to obtain the intellectual property patent from the related government apparatus (wisdom wealth bureau) when any of their research or development belongs to their own intellectual property. Besides, software manufacturers have to apply for the international patents in order to be protected by the international laws. For example, Foxconn Electronics Inc. has more than 7,000 patents in the field of coupling industry. Those patents effectively impede potential competitors from entering the market.

Second, software manufacturers have to sign the authorized contracts with their customers. The content should conclude the detail of patent type, authorized method, authorized period, and option money, etc. Not only can software manufacturers earn option money from customers based on the contracts, but they can also request for the penalty if there is any abuse or embezzlement.
Also, software manufacturers must investigate into the software researchers and developers, and sign related security agreement with them. Software manufacturers should be aware of the difference between the patent applicant (software manufacturer) and non-application power person (who develop the software). It can reduce the risk that leaving staff violate the intellectual property right when they enter competitive companies.

The patent disputes about electronic industry between Japan and Korea have been increased rapidly these years. The competition between those large enterprises is the primary reason. Here are several cases happened from 2004 to 2008: Japanese Toshiba Corporation filed the charge in the US and Japan accusing South Korea’s Hynix Semiconductor of encroaching on the memory chip related patent. Before that, Japanese Panasonic also filed the charge in Japan accusing LG Electron of encroaching on the plasma monitor board patent and requested the court to forbid LG Electron to sell plasma monitor board in Japanese. Meanwhile, LG Electron made the countersuit immediately.

From those cases, obviously we can see that the courts still have no effective way to reduce international patent disputes. Therefore, those similar cases happened again and again. The main difficulty for the courts is that more and more electronic products use identical models which help the enterprises to develop new techniques. The authorized patents are usually weeded out in a very short period of time. The best solution for the large electronic enterprises is to sign agreement with each other so as to avoid patent disputes. In 2007, Japanese Sony and South Korean Samsung announced that two companies had agreed the sharing of fundamental technical patents in order to accelerate their product development. Simultaneously, they may also avoid increasing international patent disputes day by day. The analyst comments pointed out that this change of electron industry urged long-term competitors to become future cooperationists.

Reference Links:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39181177,00.htm?user_rating=1

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/03/led-patent-dispute-could-block-blu-ray-cellphones-imports.ars

http://www.blnz.com/news/2008/11/25/InterDigital_ends_patent_dispute_with_8222.html

Because free competition is the fundamental principle to support the US economic system, all the US companies are able to engage in any production, marketing, or service in any open environment. However, any business tort will be penalized by intellectual property laws.

While intellectual property is protected by laws, the government also has to prevent the business that owns intellectual property rights from monopolizing the market. For many years the US has put the intellectual property rights (specially is patent) under the surveillance of the fair trade laws. It gives the balance between IP rights and free competition. The developers of a new product or an idea have right to apply for patent, but they also have to agree to transfer the patent to other manufacturers when the market demand increases.

For example, Klennex is a widely known soft tissue company. Other companies are able to produce similar tissues and packing as Klennex, but any imitative trademark, name, or even blurb is illegal. Another example is Coca-Cola. Other coke companies may use similar products to compete with Coca-Cola, but different product design and idea are required.