Intellectual Property News & Articles

When Cisco acquired WebEx, the technology world waited in anticipation for what the combined company would bring to market. Cisco answered back recently by releasing a new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) communications platform that brings users a combined presence, instant messaging, Web meeting and team space for workplace collaboration.

The company aims to offer an attractive set of communication tools that will deter enterprise users from looking for external options that are outside organizations’ firewalls. Cisco WebEx Connect is designed around enabling communication and collaboration while respecting the security and management surrounding an enterprise application.

The idea of “open sourcing” a company’s intellectual property has traditionally been applied to the source code that makes up a particular application. Yet in a surprising move, Knowledge Tree - which already offers its document management system under an open source license - is releasing all of its documentation, developer guides, and marketing materials under a Creative Commons contribution license.

When a large corporate body and a suburban teen can use the same platform to air a great idea or persuasive stream of thought, what protects one or the other from negligence of source citation or outright content theft? It’s harder to track information back to its origins when the origin itself can be added, edited, published and deleted on a whim.

Noting that the corporate machine might be slightly better able than the teen at navigating the complex world of content rights, Creative Commons came up with a solution as simple and fluid as the flow of information it is often meant to protect. And recently, the 3.0 version of said solution has been unwrapped.