Economic Analysis Of The Legal Protection Of Software Intellectual Property Right

Software infringement turns to be rampant with the progressive development of the computer industry. How to protect the intellectual property of software arouses extensive concerns of the whole society. Although most countries legally regard software as private goods, the publicity of software use is getting obvious due to the rapid development of network and information industry. It becomes more and more difficult for the copyright owner to control the legal use of software. Economic analysis is particularly essential to strengthen the protection of software intellectual property right. The main purpose of this thesis is to prove the ownership of software property right and find out the concrete reasons of software copyright infringement in order to provide reasonable and effective protection ways.In preface, it shows the graveness of software piracy and briefly introduces the legislation and law enforcement of software protection. On the basis of summing up the major research trend in academic field, the thesis puts forward the meaning of the legal economics analysis of software piracy.The first part defines the ownership of software property right. Software is a kind of resource and product and needs to be allocated effectively. Resource allocation is to allocate property rights between or among participants in economic activities. The thesis analyzes the meaning of definition of property rights. Different definition of property rights can provide different encouragement. Software has characteristics of knowledge assets, such as publicity, exclusivity and exhaustibility; but it is more complex to define the software property rights. It is necessary to protect the software property rights and correct the publicity and maintain software market by the protection system of intellectual property. The thesis also puts forward that transaction cost can significantly affect the arrangement of software intellectual property rights system.The second part analyzes the efficiency of the protection of software...