ACM SIGGRAPH 2008

Know Your Rights: A Legal Primer for Software Developers, Artists, and Content Creators

What's the difference between a copyright and a trademark, between trade secrets and patents? What do these terms really mean? Having trouble keeping up with the various open-source and content licensing schemes? Want to distribute your creative work, but don't know how to prevent unauthorized use? Concerned about lawsuits based on your web site or user-created content? This class introduces the basic legal concepts you need to understand in order to license, distribute, and protect your content, and avoid making expensive mistakes that can ruin your business. In the question-and-answer period following the session, the presenters discuss attendees' legal questions.

Here is the link to the latest set of course notes:

siggraph08-knowyourrights.pdf