Sample Student Annotation |
| The following is a sample annotation derived from one created by a student in a Computer Science course. |
| Intellectual Property Law and Software Engineering Ethics | |
| Description: | This artifact describes legal and informative issues relevant to software ethics, patent laws, and Internet intellectual property. An understanding of legal issues is essential to success in the software engineering industry. These readings help us understand some of the legal issues involved in building software. Trademarks, patents and copyrights are applicable under different circumstances. As software professionals, it is important for us to understand when certain laws may be applicable. In a nutshell, there are four major intellectual property laws in the United States: Copyright law, which protects original "works of authorship". Patent law, which protects new, useful, and "non-obvious" inventions and processes. Trademark law, which protects words, names, and symbols used by manufacturers and businesses to identify their goods and services. Trade secret law, which projects valuable information not generally known that has been kept secret by its owner. |
| Reflection: |
After reading these papers, I now feel that I have a very clear understanding of ethics in Software Engineering and the laws and rules that govern this domain. I realize that it is important to understand the basic principles of these laws, their applicability, the types of works that fall within the realms of these laws and the scope of the protection. Ethical issues are important in computing because it is extremely easy to behave unethically and to abuse privileges. I feel that most violations are due to ignorance and are not intentional. A good understanding of the ethical standards and copyright laws helps add an element of honesty in a practicing software engineer's career. The dynamic and demanding context of software engineering requires all practitioners to be able to understand, assimilate and adapt to new situations as they occur. Therefore, keeping pace with the ever-changing intellectual property laws and ethical issues is an important aspect of a software engineer's career. I feel we have certain obligations to the field of software engineering and these readings helped me to understand some of the basic ethical issues, our rights and privileges, and to provide an insight into intellectual property laws that every practicing software engineer should be aware of.
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