PROBLEM - Ethical problems derived from the necessary attitude of respect towards Intellectual Property in the Cuban business system.
HYPOTHESIS- The protection of Intellectual Property rights in the Cuban business system as an ethical principle constitutes necessity
OVERALL OBJECTIVE
- Demonstrate to Cuban business actors the importance of maintaining an attitude of respect towards the protection of Intellectual Property in the business system.
RESEARCH METHODS USED
- Historical.- Intellectual Property is tracked from its origins to the present, tracking down legislation that followed the historical evolution of a national and international character. Projective-philosophical. - To a certain extent, a prediction of the operation of the Intellectual Property in the Cuban business system based on current premises. Philosophical or author.- Because the problem is approached from the theories of authors, establishing an approach from the history of ethical ideas aimed at studying the influences of the thinker, their development and their relationship with the social and political events of the problem under analysis.
INSTRUMENTS
- Document analysis Bibliographic search
Conceptual definitions
Intellectual property
- It refers to the creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, as well as symbols, names and images used in commerce and is made up of: Industrial Property and Copyright
Industrial property
It is a type of property over the technical and aesthetic creations of human ingenuity expressed in the exercise of rights over them, allowing natural and legal persons to protect them in legal competition in the market. Protects inventions, trademarks and other distinctive signs, industrial designs, utility models, topography of integrated circuits, plant varieties, as well as the repression of unfair competition. It is a means of promoting creative activity.
In summary, it is a type of property that allows entrepreneurs, institutions and individuals to exercise their rights over certain goods to compete lawfully in the market.
Copyright
It is the branch of law that regulates the subjective rights of the author over the creations they present resulting from their intellectual activity that are usually enunciated as literary, musical, theatrical, artistic, scientific and audiovisual works.
These works can be made public knowledge by any lawful means, whatever their forms of expression, their content, value or destination as defined in Article 2 of Decree-Law No. 14 of December 28, 1977.
Ethics
Branch of philosophy that classically studies what is related to good or evil. The development achieved by science and technology has brought about a change in its object of study, which deals with the problems raised by the application of the technique to life and health. A large part of them have a public dimension, since it involves third parties who have to order or apply treatments, compromises financial and technical resources,… or because it affects assets that are not exclusive to individuals. ”
Seen from the philosophical point of view is the set of moral principles and norms that regulate human activities
State company
Economic unit of production of goods and services that owns patrimonial goods and with de facto relationships, whose capital is state or partially state-owned, as well as the responsibility and results of its management.
Business
Relating to the company or entrepreneurs
Bibliography
L, Bombino, Luis R. Volume II "Ethics and Society"
Acosta Sariego, José R. "Bioethics for sustainability". Felix Varela Center. 2002.
Portela Ileana, Rizo, Madeleine, “Business ethics. Testimonies and cases ”.INCOMEX. March 2001
"Towards the protection of creation". Volume 1.Number 3,1999. CENDA.
Newsletter. Year 1.Number 5.July / August. 1997. CEPEC. MINCEX
Agreement No. 2817 of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers dated November 25, 1994
Law No. 14 "On Copyright" of December 14, 1977.
Decree-Law No. 68 of 1983 of the Council of State of the Republic of Cuba
Decree-Law 203 of December 24, 1999 of the State Council of the Republic of Cuba. Extraordinary GO May 2, 2000. page 5. MINJUS.
TRIPS agreements
Paris convention
SOME ETHICAL DILEMAS ABOUT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN THE CUBAN BUSINESS SYSTEM.
Author: Lic. Iris Consuelo Alfonso Cruz
Assistant Professor and Associate Researcher
Internal Trade Research and Development Center.
Email: [email protected]
Country: Cuba
Year 2007
SUMMARY
The objective of this work is to show the Cuban business system the importance of maintaining an adequate attitude of respect towards Intellectual Property for the consolidation of business and in the protection of its technological results, starting from analyzing some dilemmatic questions that can be put manifested in the Cuban business system regarding intellectual property. For the development of the same, we carry out a referential search of texts that are indicated in the bibliography that is mentioned, as well as laws issued by the different organs and agencies of the State and other international regulations.
SOME ETHICAL DILEMAS ABOUT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN THE CUBAN BUSINESS SYSTEM.
By definition, Intellectual Property refers to the creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, as well as symbols, names and images used in commerce and integrated by Industrial Property that acts on the technical and aesthetic creations of human ingenuity expressed in the exercise of rights over them, allowing natural and legal persons to protect them in the lawful competition in the market. Protects inventions, trademarks and other distinctive signs, industrial designs, utility models, topography of integrated circuits, plant varieties, as well as the repression of unfair competition, it is also a means of promoting creative activity; and Copyright,branch of law that regulates the subjective rights of the author on the creations they present resulting from their intellectual activity that are usually enunciated as literary, musical, theatrical, artistic, scientific and audiovisual works.
These works can be made public knowledge by any lawful means, whatever their forms of expression, their content, value or destination as defined in Article 2 of Law No. 14 of December 28, 1977.
We also analyze its fundamental legal bases, Law No. 14 of December 28, 1977, Decree-Law No. 68 of 1983 of the Council of State of the Republic of Cuba, Decree-Law 203 of December 24, 1999 of the State Council of the Republic of Cuba, the TRIPS Agreements and the Paris Convention and the behavior of the scope of application of Intellectual Property at the business level.
A second aspect where we approach taking into account the premises set out above in which dilemmatic ethical problems can manifest themselves in the Cuban business system by not respecting Intellectual Property rights based on a philosophical analysis, since we define ethics as the branch of philosophy that classically studies what is related to good or evil. The development achieved by science and technology has brought about a change in its object of study, which deals with the problems raised by the application of the technique to life and health. A large part of them have a public dimension, since it involves third parties who have to order or apply treatments, compromises financial and technical resources,… or because it affects goods that are not exclusive to individuals "(1), that is,that seen from the philosophical point of view is the set of moral principles and norms that regulate human activities. On the other hand, the Cuban business system is defined as an economic unit of production of goods and services that owns patrimonial goods and with de facto relationships, whose capital is state or partially state-owned, as well as the responsibility and results of its management.
We frame the work from a philosophical-projective perspective since to a certain extent we make a prediction of the functioning of Intellectual Property in the Cuban business system based on current premises, and, philosophical or author's since we approach the problem based on theories of authors establishing an approach from the history of ethical ideas aimed at studying the influences of the thinker, the development of his ideas and their relationship with the social and political events of the problem being analyzed.
(1) AS José R, "Bioethics for sustainability". Felix Varela Center. 2002, pp. 475-476
In business life, ensuring the protection, care and conservation of the state heritage under his responsibility is the duty of every state entrepreneur and, undoubtedly, Intellectual Property rights constitute assets of the entities that register certain inventions, industrial models, brands, among others before the Cuban Office of Industrial Property or literary works, software, or other works out of the human intellect that may be registered at the National Center for Copyright. The non-protection of these works, derive in consequences or ethical dilemmas that fall in the field of applied ethics, since the results obtained in the foundation of the problems addressed go to the field of business life, so we analyze the following:
Does the company have an attitude of respect towards the protection of Intellectual Property in the negotiation processes?
Generally, we find in the economic contracts that we sign between the contracting parties a tendency to avoid confidentiality clauses, and / or protection of intellectual property rights. Generally we see that contracts are signed aimed at obtaining an economic benefit for the company, ignoring that this benefit can result in an even greater one if we apply this protection.
In this sense, we reflect that “the employer's social responsibility is not less than that of any other professional. The company's social responsibility is aimed precisely at reviewing the role that the company plays as an economic-cultural entity in its environment and actually commits it from the economic, legal and ethical points of view regarding Intellectual Property and its protection, by compliance with the laws to seriousness and transparency with the institutions with which the company is related and, of course, respect for mankind, which is the main objective and the end of all productive and service activities. ”(2)
Another dilemmatic question results from the analysis in the field of Copyright. Is the author's moral right of paternity respected for the work done by him?
We cannot grant the company an exclusive monopoly on ideas, when in reality what it is about protecting is the resulting work or the formally conceived expression of that idea. We must observe the moral right of paternity of the author, this in no way constitutes a brake on the dissemination of ideas, on the contrary it is an incentive for cultural development, the just mention of his name along with the work he created, when This is used in any form, in addition to the fact that the author is allowed to decide if his creation will be known or not.
(2) Newsletter. Year 1. Number 5 July-August. 1997 CEPEC. MINCEX pp. 21-22
And finally we analyze a question that covers the business economic field.
Is the annual budget to be allocated for the protection of Intellectual Property rights included in the Company's Economic Plan?
To this dilemmatic question we reply that “the company is not a private institution.
From the moment that their actions do not depend on or affect only a single person, we say that we are before a social institution. Different interests converge or should converge in the company. Ethics deals with harmonizing these interests and the social relations derived from their fulfillment.
The company has a sense that legitimizes it, that makes it credible, if it loses that social credibility due to the way, for example, it treats its workers in a more or less short time, its success will decrease and disappear, since this social legitimacy is that justifies and maintains all institutions ”.
"The proper meaning of the company has to do logically with its basic contribution to society, which is none other than its efficiency in the use of the scarce resources available to it." (3)
(3) Portela, I and Rizo, M “The Business Ethics. Testimonies and cases ”. Foreign Trade Institute. March 2001. pp. 46-47.
As conclusive elements we can state that Intellectual Property is of vital importance for the scientific-technological development of a company. “Science is built and doing so is the responsibility of social actors, almost always collective and institutionalized. It is important to understand this to understand the degree of intellectual and ethical responsibility that corresponds to the actors and structures in charge of scientific policy. Scientific development is an act of choice, priority and meaning where the values at stake are essential.
REFERENCED BIBLIOGRAPHY
- L, Bombino, Luis R. Volume II "Ethics and Society" Acosta Sariego, José R. "Bioethics for sustainability". Felix Varela Center. 2002.CubaPortela Ileana, Rizo, Madeleine, “Business ethics. Testimonies and cases ”.INCOMEX. March 2001. Cuba “Towards the protection of creation”. Volume 1.Number 3,1999. CENDA.Cuba Informative Bulletin. Year 1.Number 5.July / August. 1997. CEPEC. MINCEX.Cuba
CONSULTED LEGISLATION
- Agreement No. 2817 of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers dated November 25, 1994 Law No. 14 “On Copyright” of December 14, 1977. Decree-Law No. 68 of 1983 of the State Council of the Republic of CubaDecreto – Law 203 of December 24, 1999 of the State Council of the Republic of Cuba. Extraordinary GO May 2, 2000. page 5. MINJUS. TRIPS Agreements Paris Convention
Lic. Iris Alfonso Cruz
Assistant Professor and Associate Researcher.
Internal Trade Research and Development Center.
Cuba
Contributed by: Nevalis Quintana Fernández
