Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property

Intellectual property is an important part of business. Cloud computing affects how we do business and changes how we follow the law. New problems have arisen from cloud computing. Now we must consider where the data is, who owns it, and what laws need to be followed.

Where is the data and who owns it?

Data is now distributed across the globe to increase accessibility. If a company is using a cloud-based service, who owns the data? Is it the client, the application company, or the hosting company? It depends on the agreement at each level, which can increase confusion and complexity. Fortunately, this is not anything new. In the advent of outsourcing, webhosting, and other services provided to people and companies, we are used to navigating service level agreements and dealing with a degree of error.

What laws need to be obeyed?

Dealing with a global market brings the law into question. Who's laws need to be obeyed? Each country has different laws, and it can be difficult for multinational companies to navigate the laws of each country. Currently clouds are segmented into regions to provide quicker access to that region and to avoid legal concerns. In order to have an Amazon EC2 that uses data from multiple regions it must be configured to pull from the other country's Amazon S3 service.