Google Books Library Project

Google Books is a database of millions of books on almost any topic. It is a search tool that searches the full text of the books that Google has digitalized and added to its database.

According to Google, the aim of the project make it easier for people to find relevant books – specifically, books they wouldn't find any other way such as those that are out of print – while carefully respecting authors' and publishers' copyrights.

The project started around 2003 when Google approached the Library of Congress with proposal to digitize all the books in the library. When the Library of Congress offered a counterproposal that would only include public domain books, Google did not follow up.

Google then turned other major libraries including those at the University of Michigan, Oxford University and Harvard University and the New York Public Library with some success.

The Google Library Project began in 2004 with the announcement that to would be digitizing the collections of five major university libraries, which would cover more than 15 million volumes.

In 2010 42 libraries cooperated with Google. Most libraries have restricted their collaboration to collections in the public domain.

The libraries of the University of Michigan and Stanford University have given Google permission to digitize their complete collection, including works still protected by copyright law.

It is an amazing resource and the good of using Google books that it can help educators assess the content of a book for its relation to the topic, readability level and to teach students about public domain materials and copyright laws.

Its user will be able to identify which books are likely most germane to be a specific inquiry, to locate the pages on which the search term appears, and to get limited sense  of what the book might say with regard to the subject of the user’s search.

Google will also list local libraries where the book might be found and post links to third parties, like Amazon.com, where users may purchase the book or view or download portions of it for a price.

Google Books has provided scholars the ability to engage on primary research in a way that did not exist till now. Google Books has taken some limitations such as lack of funding, travelling and research at various locations by scanning historical documents that would have been difficult to obtain through traditional modes.
Google Books Library Project

Software Intellectual Property

Product software is the software produced by a comp0nay for sale. It is easily recognizable a software that must be valued.

The software industry is now a major force in the economy, and issues of intellectual property protection will certainly shape the computer industry’s future.

An example of product software would be a word processing program or database program produced to be sold as application software.

The term ‘intellectual property’ refers to patents, copyright, trademark and trade secret. Specifically, it refers to anything created by the human mind.

Computer software is copyright whether in object or source code form. In the 1970s, software was largely protected by trade secrets because of uncertainty whether code as copyright.

But the Copyright Act of 1976 classified computer software as a ‘literary work’ subject to copyright so long as it met the criteria of qualifying as an original work of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression.

Copyright is the predominant form of software protection in the United States and abroad. In most countries, computer programs per se are not in principle eligible for patent protection.

However, in some countries certain types of computer-implemented processes and algorithms can be patent.
Software Intellectual Property