THE PROTECTION OF THAILAND’S SOFTWARE AND DIGITAL CONTENT UNDER THE CURRENT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAWS AND MECHANISMS

Abstract

The objective of this academic article is to study the right of owner of intellectual property in digital contents of software and games, all of which are important. In general, software and games are works that require instructions or code in a program written in computer language (source code) in order to function. Therefore, both types of work may be protected as literary works under copyright law. On the other hand, animation contains many types of work of arts that could be overlapped, so the exclusive right of the copyright holders or the exclusive right of the creators over these creations, either copyright or neighboring rights, could possibly be overlapped as well. In addition, since both types of digital contents have almost similar nature or characteristics, the business model, patterns of intellectual property rights infringement found on the internet, and the mechanisms that the copyright holders may use to prevent or respond to the online intellectual property rights infringement could possibly be akin.