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3 System Development Environment

A system development environment is an environment used to develop systems (or software). An appropriate system environment is necessary to perform development efficiently.

3 - 1 Intellectual Property Application Management

Intellectual property application management is the management of intellectual property rights related to system development. Intellectual property application management aims to protect a company's own intellectual property rights, and to avoid infringing on the intellectual property rights of other parties.

(1) Copyright management

In copyright management, the rights (copyrights) of the authors of works are managed. In system development, software (i.e., program) copyrights are mainly the target of management. In the case of employee works in particular, copyrights are managed so that the corporation or such other organization becomes the author as far as there are no agreements or work rules. (Refer to p.96 for more about copyrights.) In order to protect its own copyrights, a company uses technologies that may include copy guards to prevent the duplication of works, DRM (Digital Rights Management) to protect digital data works, or activation to require license registration before use.

(2) Patent management

In patent management, applications (to the Patent Office) for patent rights to inventions newly conceived in the development process, and licensing of the use of patents held by others, are managed. Forms of licensing, such as cross-licensing and patent pools, should be considered in addition to fee-based license agreements. Furthermore, patent rights include non-exclusive licenses and exclusive licenses, and it is impossible to use a patent when an exclusive license is registered for the patent. (Refer to p.97 for more about patent rights.)

(3) License management

In license management, a company manages license agreements when it uses software for which it does not own copyright. The company must also perform management so that the

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number of users of the software does not violate licensing agreements. (Refer to p.113 for more about licensing agreements.) The party conferring a license is known as the licenser, and the party receiving the license is the licensee.