Ethics of intellectual property, knowledge and skills

Knowledge and skills are valuable but not easily "ownable" as objects. Nor is it obvious who has the greater rights to an idea: the company who trained the employee, or the employee themselves? The country in which the plant grew, or the company which discovered раскрыла and developed the plant's medicinal potential? As a result, attempts to assert ownership and ethical disputes over ownership arise.

· Patent infringement, copyright infringement, trademark infringement.

· Misuse of the intellectual property systems to stifle competition: patent misuse, copyright misuse, patent troll патентный тролль.

· Employee raiding кадровое рейдерство: the practice of attracting key employees away from a competitor to take unfair advantage of the knowledge or skills they may possess.

· The practice of employing all the most talented people in a specific field, regardless of need, in order to prevent any competitors employing them.

· Business intelligence коммерческая разведка, промышленный шпионаж and industrial espionage.

International business ethics

While business ethics emerged as a field in the 1970s, international business ethics did not emerge until the late 1990s, looking back on the international developments of that decade. Many new practical issues arose out of the international context of business в контексте международной деловой этики. Theoretical issues such as cultural relativity of ethical values receive more emphasis in this field. Other, older issues can be grouped here as well. Issues and subfields include:

· The search for universal values as a basis for international commercial behaviour.

· Comparison of business ethical traditions in different countries.

· Comparison of business ethical traditions from various religious perspectives с тз разных религий.

· Issues such as globalization and cultural imperialism.

· Varying global standards стандарты в разных странах - e.g. the use of child labor.

· The way in which multinationals международные компании take advantage of international differences, such as outsourcing production передача на аутсорсинг (e.g. clothes) and services (e.g. call centres) to low-wage countries страны с низким уровнем оплаты труда.

· The permissibility of international commerce with pariah states отвергнутыми странами.