Guideline for safeguarding intellectual property rights of crowdsourced software engineering activities

• Main Author: Hani Barjes Salameh Al-Bloush
• Format: text::Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: SAFEGUARDING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS OF CROWDSOURCED SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Leveraging the power of the crowd to perform Crowdsourced Software Engineering (CSE) tasks is likely to result in benefits such as high quality, better reliability, and flexibility at a lower cost and shorter time. However, the benefits of crowdsourcing come with issues of Intellectual Property (IP) rights associated with the identification of IP ownership and level of acquisition, the confidentiality of the crowdsourcing tasks, and the originality of the crowdsourced content. These issues emerged due to the absence of a unique mechanism effectively manages IP rights in CSE activities, based on the findings of the literature review. This study focuses on this gap and intends to develop a guideline for crowdsourcing platforms supporting CSE activities to safeguard IP rights through effective management and control among stakeholders. The current status of the poor management of IP rights was mainly identified through the analysis of 31 legal documents of crowdsourcing platforms supporting CSE activities. Based on this, a review of 4 existing IP rights guidelines abstracted the IP rights sound practices. It served as inputs to the recommendations, together with those of former researchers and the structure and components in the propose IP rights guideline. The developed guideline was then reviewed and refined until an expert panel consensus was achieved prior to the evaluation process. The execution of evaluation involved 28 international experts specializing in IP/IP rights, Cyber Law, Information and Communication Technology Policy, Cloud Data Protection, Technology Transfer from both academia and corporate. The proposed guideline presents ownership and licensing positions together with circumstances which constitute the body of evidence for each position identifying the IP ownership and controlling the level of acquisition. Besides, the proposed guideline provides a flowchart illustrating the step-by-step guide, along with a practical example to ensure the active engagement of all stakeholders in the decision-making process and obligations relating to both confidentiality and originality. Ultimately, the recommendations conclude with a contractual agreement on all necessary provisions to be agreed upon prior to implementation, using the entering mechanisms into the crowdsourcing process (broadcasting and assigning mechanisms). The proposed guideline would enhance the crowdsourcing process dealing with various software engineering tasks that differs in characteristics and the knowledge required to be achieved. The crowdsourcing platforms supporting CSE activities could adopt this completely developed, reviewed, and evaluated IP rights guideline. To streamline their broadcasting and assigning mechanisms to ensure appropriate management of IP rights for a mutually beneficial arrangement between the stakeholders, which further ensures crowdsourcing success.