Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies are the essential techniques for underpinning enforcing copyright in the digital age. They act as an overarching means of restricting access to privileged (Copyright, Patent, Design Right, trade secret) information that has to be made available to internal staff or to carefully selected third parties.
Obviously, information leading to a patent must be kept secret until the patent application is made. But in the case of copyright it has to be remembered that there is a doctrine of fair use that allows for personal study, but does not make it lawful to re-distribute copies although there seems to be an unwritten agreement that 10% of a work is not copying as long as it is for criticism.
Original infographic provided by Locklizard
