The Internet of Things
By: Fernando Becerril
President of Becerril, Coca & Becerril
Last December I went to the conference of the Inter-American Association of Intellectual Property where were discussed issues related to the future of technologies and the dynamics these are following. It is clear and evident to all that information technologies are the ones that are in the collective imagination. Cellular telephony, the development of devices (mobile phones, tablets and laptops), wireless communication and, in general, all topics that allow us to be connected in the way this 21st century has accustomed us.
Parallel in the world many topics related to communication per se are discussed and analyzed, such as the development of apps for devices; processing in the “cloud”; the protection mechanisms of graphical user interfaces; the rights of the authors of everything published on the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., without losing sight of the fact that the right to own image is upset day by day with the unbridled pleasure of uploading photographs of own and strangers to social networks.
As we can suppose, all these issues represent a challenge for the systems of protection of intellectual property rights since most of the laws of the subject do not contemplate clear schemes for the protection of many of these technologies and therefore, a very creative vision of legislation is needed to obtain the best of them for the benefit of the creators of these “new” intellectual rights.
Up to this point, things are more or less controllable.
The future is even more challenging. Imagine that if in the last 13 years has generated a revolution of communication (Facebook created in 2004, Twitter in 2006 and WhatsApp in 2009) what awaits us in the future is interesting.
A few years ago, it was still science fiction and only reserved for cinema a life in which virtually everything was controlled by computers. Windows that adapt to the light and that can change its tone, the intelligent request of provisions and supplies, vehicles that are handled alone using satellite systems and many other applications that today, day by day, are incorporated into our daily life. Thus, science fiction, in this sense, ceased to be and the practical application of it is something we live every day. For those of us who are “digital immigrants,” the development that has exploded is surprising, but for all those “digital natives” it is a reality that would be difficult to conceive without all the technology that surrounds us.
And just as technology is developed, an adequate legal system should be developed in parallel to provide innovators with legal certainty about their developments and users, ensuring that what they are using, consuming or contracting has the corresponding protection. Unfortunately, as is often the case, technological development is ahead of legal systems and there are gaps in protection that need to be corrected. In the same way that technology is innovated, it must be done in legal systems. That is why we must deal quickly with the reforms needed to meet the needs of an accelerated, creative, interconnected and increasingly dynamic world.
Source http://www.bcb.com.mx/el-internet-de-las-cosas/
Magazine: Alto Nivel. January 2017