This is a document produced by the BEinGRID project regarding the IPR issues arising in the course of the business experiments carried in during the project.
This document provides an overview of the intellectual property issues that may occur in the context of the provision of grid services on a commercial basis. The approach attempts a categorisation of the legal concerns vis-à-vis the different informational goods that fall under the protective scope of the regulatory framework for intellectual property.
Accordingly, the full document is divided into the chapters mirroring the different qualities (and legal perquisites) of each intellectual property asset: while chapter 3 focuses on copyright, as a form of protecting computer programmes and other informational products, chapter 4 covers the legislative protection granted by the European legislator with regard to databases (and possibly, grid databases), and chapter 5 tackles the controversial issue of software patentability (with its consequences on the patentability of grid middleware/applications, or business methods). Besides from the said stricto sensu intellectual property assets, chapter 6 describes the legal protection that is conferred to the owners of sensitive information, notably trade secrets. Chapter 7 presents the reader with an overview of the different licensing possibilities that are available to owners of intellectual property rights. Prominence has been given to open source licenses due to their traditional use in grid middleware. Compatibility concerns for derivative works have also been compared. Appendix A takes a detailed look at the business experiments conducted in the framework 6 BEinGRID project, presenting the reader with a table where indicative concerns and remarks are made for each experiment.
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© 2007 BEinGRID